


Beyond

by moobloomsupremacy



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Enemies to Friends, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Minecraft, No Beta, Slow Burn, no editing, no explicit romance, seriously, the majority of this was written between the hours of 1 and 3 am, we die like the ender dragon in manhunt 4v1 rematch
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:00:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27299065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moobloomsupremacy/pseuds/moobloomsupremacy
Summary: It's just a man in a mask, right?George is the apprentice royal Manhunter, and for his final test, he is tasked with tracking down the infamous Nightmare, the masked man in the green cloak who's proven both mysterious and powerful in thwarting the King's mercenaries. George is eager to prove himself to his friends and his kingdom, but what happens when he realizes that hiding under the emerald hood is discovery, danger, and a quest that leads beyond the world George thought he knew?What happens when he's no longer Nightmare, but Dream?- a dream team adventure au, george/dream centric- last update: 30/12/20 new chapter! + minor edits for continuity- on hiatus :]
Relationships: Clay | Dream & GeorgeNotFound & Darryl Noveschosch & Sapnap, Clay | Dream & GeorgeNotFound & Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), Clay | Dream & GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 22
Kudos: 77





	1. before we begin!

hi!  
welcome to my first work on this account, and one of the 15 fanfictions that are stacking up in my google docs lol.  
you've probably all heard this disclaimer before, and it's sad that people have to give one at all, but here goes (: first and foremost, please don't shove anything into a cc's face, whether it's a fanwork, a ship, whatever you want to call it. the dream team have said that they're comfortable with fanfiction. if that changes for anyone, at any point, i'll immediately take this whole thing down. this is a work of original creative writing with characters based on real-life people. please understand my intentions: this is an adventure story about friendship. so yeah lol. to summarise:  
1\. this is a work of fiction.  
2\. this is not a romance story. the tags are for reach.  
3\. always respect the real-life creators' wishes and comfort above anything else.  
whew! with that all out of the way, enjoy my 3am scribblings that somehow turned into a story, also known as Beyond!  
\- author (she/her)

ps. this story will have swearing, fantasy violence, etc. in it, so please use caution if you're uncomfy with any of that stuff!

pps. if you'd like to imagine the gang the way i do when i describe them, watch this boppy animatic by skywerse on youtube! all credit goes to them!  
link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYagPzGCEt0


	2. Chase

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome to the actual story! i rewrote this chapter a couple times just to make sure it sets the tone properly, but i have not read it to anyone besides myself because the day my friends know i write fanfiction is the day i pull an mcc 11 and dip to give birth.  
> hhhhhh please tell me i didn't make any typos!  
> -author (she/her)

“Run.”

The word slips from George’s mouth, lips curling upwards into a gleeful, almost maniacal smile. He feels the wind whipping by his face, his boots catching on grasses and rocks as he races after his target, and it’s exhilarating. The sky above him has never seemed bluer, and he swears each of the normally muddled colours making up his surroundings is a bit sharper, a bit brighter, as he passes them by. Gulp after gulp of cool air he takes as he runs, picking up his pace despite the burning sensation in his legs. He’s high on the thrill of the chase, and it’s propelling him forwards at a speed he knows even his opponent can’t beat.

It isn’t for lack of trying, though. The figure ahead of him seems to fly through the air as he vaults over fallen logs, making his way towards the dark, dense oak forest stretching out ahead of him in both directions. If he hears George’s taunt, he shows no signs of it, only picking up the pace. The heavy iron sword he holds in his right hand nearly falls from his grasp, and he hurriedly sheaths it at his belt, never slowing down for a second. He reaches the treeline and wastes no time diving into the thick wall of foliage. George knows he’s hoping against hope that the emerald-green cloak slung around his shoulders might provide some camouflage in the tangled undergrowth.

George laughs, a high, sarcastic sound that’s whipped away from him as fast as it had appeared. Did the man really think he could hide from him? 

He might have been able to, a few months ago. When George was wide-eyed, inexperienced, and thoroughly terrified of his prey. It had been easy for his foe to evade him then--setting elaborate traps and diversions that had left George tripping over his own two feet. Forcing him to spend days after day simply trying to catch back up to him, squinting at his compass and praying that he was on the right track.   
The memories burn as they bubble up inside of George, and he forces them back down into his stomach, turning them into fuel that only leaves him hungrier for victory.

“Where do you think you’re going, hmm? You have no food, no shelter, nowhere to go anymore! Feel like making this easier for the both of us?” 

George’s confidence is just another thing that had improved during his days on the road-- not much time or energy to gloat over small victories in training when BadBoyHalo, his trainer, and more importantly, one of his best friends, had him dueling for hours on end at the castle. Even a week ago, he would never have had the gall to tease, taunt and try to worm into the mind of his opponent like he’s doing now.

“Getting a little too big for your boots, there, Lost Boy,” yells the man ahead of him, sounding nonchalant, as if George’s words about his lack of options aren’t true. “Catch me first, smack-talk later.”

George scowls. “With a name like The Nightmare, I thought you would have something better up your sleeve, but here I am,” he gulps in a breath, sprinting faster than he would have thought possible, “about to catch you, and the best roast you can think of is calling me by my name.”

To his surprise, Nightmare laughs, a wheeze that sounded like a dying tea kettle. “Sure about that, are ya?” He swerves sharply to the left, ducking under a thick branch and disappearing from George’s view. What the blaze?

George wastes no time in adjusting his course, pulling his sword and shield into his hands in case Nightmare is gearing up to fight. After almost a day straight spent running, never letting the man out of his sight, never stopping to rest, he’s ready to end the tedious chase. To his surprise, he can see bright light ahead, and hear distinctly human sounds. As he crashes through the last line of trees, he can see that they have stumbled upon a wide clearing smack dab in the middle of the forest, and-- much to George’s dismay-- a village. 

George groans and bites his lip, slowing his pace to a jog and allowing himself a moment to breathe as a tall, slim figure in a green hood weaves farther and farther away through the fields of wheat.

In the three months that George has been in pursuit of the slippery, cunning, infuriatingly evasive Nightmare, who has a bounty on his head worth diamonds, he has learned certain things about how the man operated. When he was first declared wanted by the kingdom, George was certain that as freshly minted apprentice to the King’s personal manhunter, he’d have the job done in a trice. A tall young man in a mask and a green cloak didn’t seem like he’d be all that hard to stop, after all. 

But George had soon learned that the obvious speed and strength of the man called Nightmare paled in comparison to his intelligence and charisma. He had a way of making people trust him that infuriated and, unfortunately, impressed George. Once he dove into the crowds at a village or in a city, there was no way to capture him without attracting the wrong sort of attention. 

Nightmare knows it as well as he does, and so he slips past the first row of wooden houses on the outskirts of the quaint village, and is soon lost among the chatter of the market stalls and cheery bonfires lining the cobblestone streets. Before he turns the final corner, however, he turns back, and locks eyes with George (though he can never be sure what the man is really looking at, his face almost completely hidden behind a white mask), giving him a triumphant grin that has George’s blood boiling.

George curses under his breath, running a hand through the mess of his dark hair. He hastily puts away his sword and shield, to try and blend in, and attempts to be as nonchalant as possible as he approaches the village. Villagers in plain brown farmers’ clothes, book-toting Librarians, and battered, sometimes bespectacled Blacksmiths pass him by. A few curious glances are thrown his way, but nothing too serious-- George supposes that living as remotely as they do, there are rarely malevolent outsiders in their pocket of paradise. 

Where could he have gone? 

George replays similar moments from the past months over in his head, searching for any patterns that could tell him where Nightmare would disappear to. The armory, the inn, and the trading post are all strong contenders, but George barely has time to consider them before his stomach lets out a growl. He slings his pack off his shoulders, only to reach in and discover that he, too, is running lower on resources than he thought. He’ll need to stop and refuel before daring to strike at Nightmare, if he’s still lurking in the shadows of the village. On even ground, they both know that Nightmare is the superior fighter, which makes the knot of frustration in George’s throat sting just a little more. He had been so close, just then. It’s like the whole world’s against him.

As he trades some emeralds in exchange for a room at the inn, he has a thought he’s had a few, fleeting times in the past while. Alone in the small but cozy room, staring blankly at a charming clay pot of lilacs on the windowsill, he dares to say it aloud.

“Why am I still doing this?”

He remembers the words of his friends, the last time he had spoken to them before embarking on the solitary journey.

“Don’t worry, George, you’re gonna do great! You’ll be all done and back home before you know it,” Bad had assured him, a mixture of concern and pride swirling in his eyes. He had given him a tight hug, and wished him luck, before stepping back to allow Sapnap to speak.  
The younger man had looked almost awkward, lost for words. Finally, he managed to speak up.

“If you don’t catch him in two weeks I’m calling it an L.”

“SAPNAP!” Bad chided, but George was laughing. Sapnap gave him a punch on the shoulder and turned to go, before Bad, horrified at the informality of the goodbye, convinced George to sandwich himself in between his two best friends for a group hug.

“You’re squishing me, guys,” sighed George, but he made no move to leave the embrace.   
“Good, we’re giving you rock-hard abs,” drawled Sapnap. “Go get him, Lost Boy.”  
George rolled his eyes, pink dusting his cheeks. “Don’t. You know I hate that name.”  
“Yeah,” teased Bad, “only the epic Blood God, King of Everything and Super Cool Guy can call him that.”  
“Stoooop,” he whined, having half a mind to leave right then and there, before he could be teased into oblivion. “The King told me to go, so I’m going.” He thought about the peculiarity of this first mission. “I don’t even know this Nightmare guy, or why he’s wanted! I just know I need to bring him back alive.”  
“We get it,” they both assured him. “We trust you, and the King does too, if this job is so top secret,” added Sapnap.

George knew what his friends were trying to say, but he was nervous, recognizing deep down that the fate of his three-year apprenticeship as a Royal Manhunter hinges on his success at capturing Nightmare. 

That nervousness, lingering in the back of George’s mind, is undoubtedly what keeps him fixated on his goal, months after Sapnap’s two weeks have come and gone. He can almost hear the gleeful laughter Sapnap will have at George’s expense once he returns to the castle, victorious but so, so tired of hunting.

He flops down on the bed of his inn room, kicking off his scuffed boots and slinging his bags, tool belt and assorted weapons on top of the bedside drawer. He’s doing this for his kingdom, and his friends, and his pride. 

No matter how many times he winds up burnt alive from a lava trap, or impaled on Nightmare’s sword; no matter how many times he bolts awake with an empty inventory miles from where he died, he will persevere. He’ll keep going, until he captures Nightmare, or his body gives up on him. Darkness falls on the forest village, his enemy certainly miles away by now, but George lets his thoughts carry him off into a fitful sleep.

I’m sorry, stranger, he tells the man in the mask, it’s personal now.


	3. Duel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heya! back again with more word vomit.  
> it's nanowrimo, babey! i've chosen to focus on this fic to get to 50k, and i honestly hope i succeed this year (fun fact, i haven't so far).  
> enjoy the dialogue, and the overuse of adverbs!  
> \- author (she/her)

The sun rises early, as it always does, streaming through the white curtains of George’s room and bathing it in a soft golden glow that dusts his pale cheeks. His eyelids flutter open. 

George can’t truly appreciate the beauty of a sunrise, but the warm color is pleasing nonetheless, and he likes waking up to the chill of an autumn morning. He rises, packs quietly, and slips out the inn before even the owners have arisen.

Standing alone on the cobblestones of the town square, an elegant but ancient fountain gurgling quietly across the street, George pulls out his compass; a gift given to him by the King, along with his sword, the day before he began his journey. Tracing his fingers over the familiar dents and scratches in its silver surface, he mutters, “Show me Nightmare.”

The needle of the compass gives a funny lurch, then spins to the left, the direction opposite of the way George was chasing him yesterday. “Interesting,” George says to himself. “Well, no time to waste.” Within seconds, he’s weaved through the rows of houses and shops to the gravel path leading back into the woods, and in a few more leaps and bounds, he’s crashing back through the tangle of trees, out of the clearing, out of the growing sunlight, and back on the hunt.  
-  
Nightmare wakes with a start, immediately hitting his head on the branch above him with a thud that has nearby woodland animals scurrying for cover. He groans, nursing his bruised scalp, and rubs his eyes. Sleep hadn’t come easily, but after an hour of convincing his brain that there was no way his pursuer would be able to find him, he had managed a few hours of rest, strapped to a thick branch of an oak tree with his back scraping uncomfortably against the rough bark of the trunk. Now, however, there’s bags under his eyes and a purple bruise forming beneath his tangle of dirty blonde hair. 

Shivering slightly, Nightmare adjusts his cape and hood, ensuring that his flint and precious potion bottles are all where he left them. Finally, he snatches his mask off of a thinner branch to his right, carefully tucking his hair behind his ears and fastening the clasp at the back of his head. He throws the hood of his cape up, mussing with his fringe in what he hopes is a roguishly handsome and windswept way. There, now he’s ready to face the day.

Nightmare starts up a tuneless whistle as he saunters through the forest, watching the horizon explode into bright shades of pink and orange as the sun comes up. Living on the run hasn’t been easy to get used to, but he’s seen a hundred more sunsets in the past months than he had in years of living… well, where he was before his life came crashing down around his ears.

“I refuse to think of it,” says Nightmare out loud, as if hearing his own voice will convince himself it’s true. He picks up his pace, practically jogging through the brush. “That’s the past now. I have a mission. Things to do, places to go, creatures to see.”

Lost in his thoughts, he runs face-first into a tree, and feels an explosion of pain. Great. Another purple bruise, to complement the one on his noggin, and a dark red trickle down his mask. Nightmare doesn’t have the energy to wipe away the blood.

“This is going to be a fantastic fucking day.”

A drop of blood lands on the toe of his boot.   
And suddenly, Nightmare gets an idea.  
-  
“There’s no way.”  
It’s the first words George has uttered in hours, and his voice is hoarse. He downs some water from his canteen, crouching in the mud and grass to inspect it closer. “No way,” he repeats, clearer this time. His long fingers tentatively prod a patch of ground, inspecting the distinctly unnatural marks, and…  
“Is that blood?”

As he dips his finger into the murky substance, George realizes it most certainly is blood-- a few drops of it, scattered in the crushed grass. George looks around wildly for more clues, and sees a couple more drops at the base of a particularly sturdy-looking tree. Further inspection of the area reveals more tracks-- large boots, by the looks of it, leading deeper into the brush. George’s heart soars. His target must be close-- and injured enough to leave a careless trail of blood and footprints for George to follow. He whoops and cackles gleefully, but stops once he realizes that he’s going to have to go about this very carefully. He slowly, ever so slowly, draws his sword, and begins tiptoeing his way along the path of destruction.

An hour passes, and George is beginning to lose hope. He’s been following Nightmare’s trail for so long, each footprint or torn fern getting a little bit less distinguishable from the natural brick-a-brack of the wild woods.

What was it that Bad had told him about tracking?  
“It’s not like you have to look at every leaf or anything, that’ll just waste your time. If the trail’s gone cold, just think about where he might go. Is he hurt? Is he hungry? Does he need someplace to sleep? Whatever he needs, he’ll be looking for it.”  
What does Nightmare need right now? George screws his eyes shut, picturing the man inside his head. What does he know about him?

He’s very tall, so camouflage is hard. He might be hiding in a tree somewhere, but it’s still mid-afternoon, and although George doesn’t know what exactly he’s trying to stop Nightmare from doing, he knows that he must want to use all the daylight hours he can.  
The village had had something he needed-- cover, and a chance to lose George in the crowd. But Nightmare hadn’t paused in the forest, not even when a whole flock of sheep were grazing nearby. “He must not need anything in the forest, then,” George muses, spelling out his thoughts to nobody but a couple of cows and a lone wolf. 

It hits him. “He’s looking for a way out! He needs to get to another biome.”  
Feeling pleased with himself, George focuses his attention on finding a way out of the forest, and it doesn’t take him long to do so. Before he knows it, he’s standing on the edge of a dry grassland, gnarled acacia trees dotting the landscape as far as the eye can see. There’s less sound out here, save for the whispering of the grasses brushing together, and the sun beats heavily on his back. George scans his surroundings, twirling his sword languidly through his fingers. No sign of the man, but that’s not surprising. The yellow grass is so tall in some places that even a giant like Nightmare could be easily hidden in them. 

Then a tiny white speck catches George’s eye, fluttering lazily from the end of a dead brown bush.

George runs over to it and snatches it up. It’s a tiny scrap of bloody bandage, almost like a small white flag of surrender. His grin broadens, and his eyes glint. He’s about to end the chase, once and for all. It just took a little blood to throw Nightmare off guard.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are!” George snickers, traipsing across the plain. The sun’s dipping farther down in the sky, but George doesn’t feel worried. He’s confident it’ll be all over soon. And oh, will it ever be.  
-  
Nightmare shrugs off his cloak and sash, winding a new bandage around his forehead before replacing his mask. His head still aches, but he doesn’t feel the pain anymore. His brain is moving too quickly, plotting and planning and rehearsing every possible outcome of his devilish trap.

“Whatever your name is, dude, I almost feel sorry for you,” he says to the air, hoping that through the fields of space and time, his pursuer will somehow get the message. He’s hoping that they’ll be having a little chat in a few hours--maybe less.

From outside the mountain cave where he’s holed up, overlooking both the plains and the forest from which he came, he sees movement-- a pale figure in a blue tunic approaching a bush. He can almost see the poor man’s grin. “Oh dear,” Nightmare laments sarcastically, “he’s fallen right into my trap.”

It had been so easy-- all he’d had to do was be a bit more careless than usual, leaving plenty of muddy tracks and torn vines in his wake. The strategically placed bandage was, as his old friends might have called it, a ‘1000 IQ moment’. Now he’s seeing his plan unfold before his very eyes. The man has his sword drawn, but he’s moving away from the mountain, back to where Nightmare stands at the entrance to the cave. With all the grace of the wild cats that roam these very plains, Nightmare climbs down the steep rock face dotted with grass, and creeps up on the man.  
-  
“Well, well, well.”  
The voice makes George freeze in his tracks. He grips his sword tightly and prepares to swing, but before he can turn, he feels a sharp point at the back of his neck.  
“How the tables turn, right? I’m honestly surprised that you fell for that. I guess you’re as tired as I am, trying to catch up to me for three months.”  
George shuffles through his mental list of quips. He didn’t prepare one for this particular situation, but he’s sure he can improvise.  
“Yeah, and I just did,” he stammers. 

Shit. That was not as cool as it sounded in his head.

Nightmare gives a low chuckle that makes the hairs on the back of George’s neck stand up.  
“Fight me then. I like a challenge.”  
Now that infuriates George. His cheeks are flaming red and his palms are sweaty, and he feels like he could sink into the ground or, better yet, launch himself through a portal and into a lava pool. Who does this Nightmare guy think he is? The quick back-and-forth banter during a chase was one thing, but this… George’s pride can’t take it. He raises his sword and adjusts his stance.

In a whirl of shimmering metal, he spins and jabs out, but Nightmare’s sword parries just in time. George stares him down, or at least, he glares at the place on his mask where his eyes would be. Then they start to duel in earnest, almost evenly matched with Nightmare’s head wound and George’s fury. George is on the offensive, dealing blow after blow with unimaginable strength, but Nightmare is nimble. He ducks, rolls, and deflects, looking almost bored.

“What’s your name, by the way?” Nightmare asks, inspecting his cloak after a particularly vicious swipe from George catches the edge of it. He plucks out a few stray threads as George staggers back, panting.

“What’s it to you?”

Nightmare scoffs, giving his sword an obnoxiously flamboyant twirl.   
“It’s polite to ask.”  
George knows deep down it’s a distraction, but that doesn’t stop him from blinking owlishly, guard dropping for a split second. In that second, Nightmare becomes a blur, and suddenly George finds himself pinned to the ground, the taller man’s knee in his stomach, his sword flung five feet to his left. A masked face surrounded by messy, wavy hair and a strong, freckled chin loom over him, blocking out the trees and the darkening sun. George struggles, but knows it’s futile-- Nightmare has proven time and time again that once he has the upper hand, there’s no use in resisting. He closes his eyes, mentally preparing for the pain of dying, and the loss of all his items. If Sapnap could see him now… 

“You can kill me now. I’ll catch up eventually.”  
Nothing happens. George tentatively opens one eye.  
“I don’t think I will, honestly. It’s getting kinda boring.”  
And without further ado, Nightmare stands up, dusts off his cloak, and ties George’s hands behind his back.  
“I found a nice cave in the mountain over there, so you can sleep a little, and I have plenty of steak in my bag if you’ve run out. Don’t steal anything, though.”

George feels numb. How should he even respond? He elects not to, as Nightmare retrieves his sword and leads him up to a jagged opening in the mountain, where flickering light suggests that a fire has been started. The only sounds during the walk are the crunching of their footsteps, and the occasional hisses of spiders spawning as the moon peeks its head over the triumphant man and his exhausted, humiliated hunter.

The night is cold, but the fire is warm, and George is (begrudgingly) grateful for it. He rests his head gently against the stone behind him, eyelids drooping, and staring at his sword, propped up against the wall by Nightmare’s. They look almost identical, save for the royal purple leather wrapped around the hilt of George’s.

Nightmare breaks his long silence at last, tossing him a steak and starting on another himself.  
“What do all your fancy friends up at the castle call you? I lived there for a long time, but I’ve never met you before.”  
George feels oddly self-conscious, keenly aware of the man’s eyes looking at him from behind his mask. “That’s why the King hates you so much… betrayed by one of his own.” It occurs to George that he should have put two and two together-- there’s no way Nightmare was just another criminal, even just a well-known one. There’s some kind of story there. He keeps these thoughts to himself, and answers the question.

“The King calls me Lost Boy. My friends call me George.”  
Nightmare does more wheezy laughing. “Lost Boy? What kind of sentimental bullshit... Alright, George-Not-Found.”  
It’s almost funny.  
“I just wanna talk. Usually when I try we’re both out of breath.” Dream picks at a spot of blood dried on the corner of his mask. George notices the purple and blue bruises on his knuckles, but makes sure not to stare. He says nothing.  
“I get that it’s not your fault, chasing me, you’re just doing what you’ve been told.”  
George’s nose wrinkles. “I’m not stupid.”  
“I know you’re not. That’s why I want to talk to you.”

He’s nothing if not persistent, George thinks. It’s been a while since he’s had a proper conversation with anyone, and he’s too tired to stop himself.  
He tells him about his long apprenticeship inside the castle walls, and his final test: to track the infamous and highly wanted Nightmare down and bring him back to the King, alive.

“My friends thought it sounded like the greatest honor. I wasn’t sure about doing this, but they convinced me.”  
“They sound like nice people.”  
“Yeah, they are… wait, are you trying to get information out of me?”  
“No. Like I said, I lived there too. Nothing went on in that place that I didn’t know about… not even the great King could keep a secret from me.”   
There’s a sour note creeping into Nightmare’s voice, but he quickly reels himself back in.

“Anyway, that was a long time ago now. I’ve been traveling for years.”  
“Years? Then why wasn’t somebody sent after you until now?”  
“Oh, they tried to catch me, all right,” Dream’s shoulders shake with laughter as he relives the memory, “but nobody really wanted to keep going after I killed them for the fifteenth time. One person, she had enchanted armor on her. Never saw her face after that.”  
George suddenly feels a little less bad about his current predicament.  
Nightmare chews his steak, refusing to look at him, but not turning away, either. The fire fades into a hot pile of embers.

“It was his idea, wasn’t it? The whole ‘Nightmare’ thing was the King’s idea.”  
“... why wouldn’t it be?” George is filled with sudden, overwhelming curiosity about his opponent, a man who he never thought he’d be talking to like this. It’s almost… friendly. George wants to learn more about the most wanted man in the kingdom.

Nightmare smiles ruefully. “They once called me a different name.”  
George snorts. “What, ‘little shit’?”  
The other man tilts his head, chewing on his bottom lip. His hair, golden in the firelight, falls messily over his face, and he seems more human in that moment than he ever has to George.  
He seems to have decided something. “No.”

“My name is Dream.”


	4. Truce

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *insert upbeat non-copyright music here*  
> (tommyinnit voice) WHAT IS UP READERS, back again today with another unedited chapter written at ungodly hours of the night!  
> to all the friends in the u.s.a reading this, big hugs!! it's been a crazy few days and i hope that you have hope like i do.  
> i might be adding or subtracting things from this chapter in the future, such as plot lines that i decide not to pursue, but let's test the waters a bit first. (edit from the next day: i did some more work on this chapter and hopefully improved it!)  
> enjoy!  
> \- author (she/her)

It seems like George has just closed his eyes, but now he’s being roughly shaken awake. “Fuck off, Sapnap,” he grumbles, before realizing his mistake. He hurriedly snaps his eyes open and sits up, feeling his bed of gravel shift below him. The last thing he wants is to put his friends in danger of being targeted by Nightmare… or, George remembers suddenly, Dream. He can’t afford sleepy slip-ups.

The man in question is crouched a few feet away from him, silent and staring. It unnerves George, and he wonders dully if he’s about to meet a violent end after all.  
But the moment passes, and Dream shakes his head, returning to the fire pit, which George sees he has rebuilt. He looks right, towards the jagged slash of rock that is the cave entrance, and feels a gust of cold wind hit his face. The sun is still bright, but it’s approaching late autumn, and there’s a few brown leaves scattered on the rocks from the forest below. It looks like it’s midmorning.

George shifts himself into a more comfortable position, trying to strain his hands out of the rope inconspicuously. No time like the present to start escaping.   
“What happens now?”  
Dream, hunched over the fire and slowly chewing a piece of bread, turns to look at him.   
“What do you mean?”

George sighs. He’s cold, and cranky, and hates the fact that he just called Nightmare his… real name… inside his head. “I mean, are you gonna lava trap me so I won’t be able to escape and I’ll just spend an eternity stuck in a prison? Bury me in obsidian?”  
Dream draws back, his mouth parting slightly. “God, no. You really think I’m that sadistic?”  
George gapes at the unexpected words, realizing that he doesn’t know much about the man at all. “I dunno. You tell me.”  
Dream says nothing else, finishing his food in silence, lips drawn in a thin line. George feels a twinge of regret, recognising that he must have struck a nerve.

Why do I even care, thinks George, and why do I keep calling him Dream?

“So, what is your plan?” George asks, to change the topic.  
“Now who’s the one gathering intel?”  
“You can’t answer my question with another question.”  
“I can if the asker isn’t armed. Which I know for a fact you aren’t.”  
“What if I am, though?” George looks himself up and down. “You still haven’t answered me. I could have a tiny axe in my sleeve right now. Or a knife in my trousers.”  
“True. But you don’t.”  
George looks longingly at his sword.

“I might let you have it back,” says Dream thoughtfully, catching him staring. “I’ll need all the help I can get, and you’re not a bad fighter.”  
“Help with what? Why would I help you with anything? You’re a traitor to the kingdom! From what the King told me, you did something bad.”  
Dream’s wheeze sounds a little forced this time around. “You don’t know anything. Maybe that’s good.”  
“I know that you’re not giving me any straight answers, and if you aren’t gonna give me any breakfast, food for thought is fine,” whines George. “Just stop being all mysterious and shit.”  
He can practically see the eyebrow raise behind the mask. George soldiers on with his false confidence.

“This must be your lucky day. I’ll let you take me with you, wherever you’re going, but I still have questions.”

Dream scoffs, rolling his eyes as he packs up the items strewn around the cave. “You’re so infuriating. Just admit I’ve beaten you! You’re giving up!”  
“You haven’t. And I’m not.”  
“What else do I need to—” Dream stops himself, evidently realizing the conversation isn’t going to go anywhere. “Just wash up in the river, before you attract the zombies who think you’re one of them.” 

George frowns, but says nothing. He won’t let Dream get under his skin— besides, he’s kind of right. After a bit of maneuvering, he manages to stand up with his hands still bound behind his back, and plods to the cave entrance. He looks out over the forest-- the grass is dewy, and a light mist hangs over the treetops. He can hear unseen birds chirping, and a rushing river at the bottom of the hill. After a moment of taking it all in, he turns back to Dream, who’s in the same position as before, not even looking at him.

“Aren’t you gonna follow me?”  
Dream smirks. “You’re a big boy, you can figure it out.”  
“What if I escape?”  
Dream starts on his second loaf of bread, spewing crumbs as he talks. “You won’t get far. Your hands are literally tied up.”  
“What if I break the rope? What then, Dream?”

Dream seems to be thinking about it. He swallows the rest of the bread in one bite, chewing thoughtfully. His expression is inscrutable behind the mask. He reaches into his pack, rummages for a moment, and pulls out a steak, which he starts eating with gusto. Finally, he replies.  
“I’ll catch you, I guess.”

Without another word, George spins on his heel and begins traipsing down the mountain. Talking to this guy is infuriating, and George is beginning to understand why the King’s exact instructions were to tape his mouth closed during the journey back.  
The journey back… 

George feels exhausted, even though it’s not midday yet. All of the high stakes, the fine line of emotions he had been tiptoeing across yesterday as he anticipated the end of a months-long quest, have come crashing down on his shoulders, and defeat burdens him even more than expectations.   
“I won’t give up,” he tells himself firmly as he rips his hands from the now loose rope, bathing in the river and letting his tunic dry on a rock nearby. “I’ll gain his trust, go along with it for a little while, then catch him when he least expects it.”  
He dresses, sits in the sun for a moment, dangling his toes in the water, then heads back to the cave. George leaves the frayed rope by the river, but only realizes when he’s walked too far to go back. Feet plodding in a steady rhythm to his new mantra: play dumb, gain his trust, catch him off guard. It seems like a sound plan to George.

Dream is waiting for him in the cave. He’s put the fire out, George notices, and his bag is packed. It looks like he washed his hair while George was out, but his mask is ever-present and his hood is back on, so it’s hard to tell. George thinks he detects a hint of surprise in his expression.  
“You came back.”  
George rolls his eyes. “Astute observation.”  
“I just thought you would have run off. Your legs look like twigs, but they’re pretty fast.”  
George elects to ignore the insult. He himself is questioning why he didn’t make a break for it.

Dream crosses his arms, tapping his foot and looming over George like an overzealous parent. “Why didn’t you run?”  
“I don’t know,” George finally snaps, at the end of his emotional wire. Too much has happened in the past twenty-four hours, and too quickly. “Can we get going? My questions haven’t magically disappeared.”  
Dream looks taken aback by the outburst. “Yeah, if you want. I’m gonna have to get more rope for your hands, though. Just to be sure.”  
“Figured,” George gripes. The rope is itchy on his skin, but he lets Dream’s tan fingers wind it around his own thin white wrists without further complaint. Just play along, he repeats to himself. Act helpless for now. Pretend.  
“Shall we?”

Dream jerks his head to the side, hurriedly grabbing his hood when the action shifts his mask slightly to the right. George catches a glimpse of a strong jaw, and a smattering of freckles. Nothing else.  
“Yeah, right this way. Walk where I can see you, if you don’t mind. And stop trying to look under my mask, I saw that.”  
Off they go, Dream poking George’s back to lead him this way and that, winding through the tall grass of the savannah in search of God knows what. “I wasn’t looking,” mutters George, but Dream either doesn’t hear him, or doesn’t care to respond, poking him down the side of the mountain in silence.  
-  
Dream is hot. Parched, shriveling, sweating profusely under the thick, dark material of his cloak and the tightly fitting mask. His pack of tools and materials grows heavier with every step, but he grits his teeth and bears it. The cherry on top? Having to think not only about himself, but his newly acquired prisoner, is slowing him down. Dream is sure he’s already passed a lava pool by now, only, he’s missed it, having to keep one eye on the man named George.

Dream knows that George is trying to seem non-threatening. He’s too passive, too unfocused, tripping over the kind of branches and rocks that he’s seen the shorter man practically fly over while chasing him. He’s a hopeless actor, really, Dream thinks, he can’t possibly think that he’ll ever get the upper hand. His fighting skills are good, but he can’t match Dream’s strength, even with adrenaline pumping through his veins like yesterday.

Dream knows that it’s not really his fault that he’s feeling defensive, of course. Coming from the castle, being fed the King’s propaganda just as he once was… it makes you feel like every little mistake could cost you your future there. Dream’s mind drifts back to the day he finally escaped, vowing never to return to the haunted place. The day he began his own quest. Dream can’t blame anyone, least of all this trusting, loyal-seeming guy, for falling for it. Lost Boy was the name the King gave him, huh? A little less poetic than ‘Dream’, but just as unassuming. A way to gain his servants’ trust, to get them to do his bidding, follow him blindly, kill for him if they have to…

“No!” Dream snaps, and he flushes the instant he realizes he said it out loud. George is looking at him with both fear and concern in his eyes, and Dream clears his throat.  
“I left a furnace back at the cave. Just realized.”  
George nods, and there’s a small silence.  
“Tell me if you see a lava pool,” Dream blurts out, “that’s why I came to this biome in the first place.”

George makes a soft noise of comprehension, but his tough guy exterior returns as quickly as it left, alongside a cheeky grin. “Good. I can throw myself in and escape. You don’t know where I set my last spawn point!”  
Dream lets out a wheeze akin to a tea kettle reaching its boiling point. “You idiot... I set your spawn point to the cave!”  
George looks flabbergasted. “While I was asleep?” he demands indignantly. Dream doubles over with laughter at the look on his face, howling at his stupefaction.  
“Oh my God, your expression right no-ho-how,” he chokes out, “priceless!”  
It’s so easy to laugh at this guy, Dream realizes, so easy to make fun of him and one-up his quips. It almost reminds him of his friends, people he hasn’t let himself consider in a long time.

Snap out of it! He’s here for the King! He’s supposed to be dragging you away to your death right now!

It still takes him a moment to calm down and wipe the tears of mirth from his eyes. Laughter is a relief, no matter at whose expense it is.  
-  
George’s entire plan just flew out the window on a wheezy gust of air. The advantage he was counting on, an old spawn point he set at a makeshift bed under a tree, is ruined. If he tries to escape now, or fling himself into harm’s way, it’ll take Dream no time at all to catch back up. Worst of all, it’s kind of funny. Dream’s laugh is infectious, and he’s forcing himself not to smile too. He gives an eye-roll to cover up, and turns away. “You’re a dickhead.”  
“I should wash your mouth out with soap, GeorgeNotFound. You speak to your mother like that?” Dream snaps his mask back against his face, adjusting it carefully to cover both of his cheeks.  
George’s face falls, and it feels like the temperature in the savannah drops a hundred degrees. “My mother is dead.”

Now that’s a conversation killer. The pair pass three pools of water, another mountain and an acacia grove before they speak another word to each other. George is waiting for a lighthearted comment to brush it off, or better yet, a good stabbing from two iron swords, which would give him an excuse to eat. However, Dream surprises him once again.

“Sorry.”  
A beat. “You don’t have to apologize,” mutters George, “it’s not your business.”  
Dream sounds as quiet as George has ever heard him. “No, but you didn’t mention it… when you said you lived at the castle… back at the cave.”  
George picks up the pace, not wanting to talk about it any longer. The more Dream tries to sweet-talk him, the easier it is to fall for it. George can’t lose sight of the fact that they’re enemies. He wants his mother, wherever she might be, no matter how faintly he remembers her, to be proud of him when he returns triumphantly to the King, and more importantly, to Sapnap and Bad.  
“Why would I? I was tired, and talking too much, but I’m not stupid. Anything I tell you, you’ll use against me.”

Now that hurts his counterpart. Dream struggles to hide his frustration. “ Look, I’m sorry for bringing it up. I didn’t mean anything by it. When will you give up the whole tough-guy act! You’re never going to take me to the King, and you can’t hurt me if you tried, which I’ve noticed, you usually don’t, at least not as much as when you fought me the other day.”  
“Oh yeah?” George whips around to face him. “I don’t try, huh? Wow. Here, you know what,” George takes a menacing step forward, glaring up at Dream with his nose inches from his mask, “give me my sword back and I’ll show you how hard I can try. I don’t care if I kill you or not!”

Dream doesn’t even consider it. “No. Absolutely not.” He nudges George’s stiff shoulder, turning him back around, and gives him a hard push. “We’re still looking. If you hear lava, let me know. Otherwise, you don’t have to talk to me. Whatever you want. Unlike some people, I don’t think everything is about me.”

The silence crackles with animosity after that, and every shove in the right direction by Dream is a little more painful than it needs to be. George feels bad for lashing out, but he’s stubborn, and he keeps his nose pointed defiantly in the air. He won’t let the insult affect him, even if it’s a little more accurate than he’ll admit.

The sun is starting its descent across the western sky, and Dream is getting a little concerned. Even without the stress of watching out for a pursuer, he’s behind schedule on his plan. He was supposed to have found a lava pool by mid-autumn, and it’s nearly winter now. A couple more days, and he could seriously be too late. He wonders if the blasted King meant for this to happen… knew he would capture his hunter. Did he send his most annoying one, for that exact reason? This skinny, overzealous guy a foot shorter than him who’s doomed to fail? Wouldn’t put it past him, thinks Dream savagely, it wouldn’t be the cruelest thing he’s ever done. He drags his fingers through the tips of the grasses reaching past his waist, and rips a patch of them out of the ground with his bare hands. George flinches a little at the noise, but refuses to turn around.

Dream knows he’s being unfair. It was, after all, him who inadvertently brought up a clearly touchy subject with George, who’s already told him far too much about himself, from the names of his friends to snippets of him doubting the King. He kicks a small pebble with the toe of his boot, needing to release his anger somehow. He will not let his emotions get the best of him, and he won’t think about George any longer. The Lost Boy. Whatever.

At that very same moment, two steps in front of him as always, the man in question crashes with unusual abandon through a patch of tall grass and disappears into the ground with a blood curdling shriek.

“George!” Dream hops through the grass cautiously and plants his feet at the edge of a hole leading almost straight underground. There’s no light coming from within, but Dream can hear groaning. He’s alive, at least, but it looks like a nasty fall. Dream can see how it would be practically invisible to an unwary traveler until too late. Dream’s relief washes over him in a cool wave. He was not enjoying the thought of running back to George’s cave spawn point in this heat.  
“How many hearts are you on?” he asks George.  
“Two and a half. I think I messed up my shoulder, but at least my arms are free now. The rope's disappeared.” George’s voice is faint, and Dream can hear a slight echo as the sound bubbles up from the hole in the ground.  
“Here, I’m tossing you some food and torches. Don’t light yourself on fire.”  
Dream does as he says, dropping bread and thin cloth-wrapped sticks from his pack into the shaft. He hears the impact of the wood landing on something hard, and George yelps.

“I’m on one heart now, idiot. Warn me next time?”  
“Just eat the fucking bread.”

A few seconds pass.

“See anything down there? What is it, anyway?” Dream cranes his neck into the tunnel, trying to gauge how deep it is. There’s a scraping noise, and the warm glow of torches flares up from within. “Looks about thirty feet deep. You’re lucky you didn’t just die.”  
“Lucky? Whatever you say.” George’s voice is stronger now that his health is back up. “It’s a cave, obviously. Someone must have dug out of it a long time ago. There’s coal, and some water… could be useful. Plenty of tunnels this way and that.” Dream nods, even though George can’t see him, and takes a pick out of his bag, preparing for the climb down. He’s been running low on coal for his furnaces, and the thought of George down there all alone, without a weapon, makes him uneasy.

Why is that? His brain questions unhelpfully.  
Because he has my torches, Dream tells it.

“DREAM,” George yells at the exact same time, proving his point, “GET DOWN HERE! THERE’S LIKE FIFTY CREEPERS!”  
There’s a funny leap that Dream’s stomach does at George yelling his good name. It’s been so long since he’s told anyone the name the King gave him, and it’s nice to hear it out loud after years of ‘sir’ from strangers and whispered ‘Nightmare’s from the villages that learned of his reputation.

It’s still not your real name, says the voice inside his head. All in good time, he responds.

Dream takes out his last water bucket. He makes a running leap into the hole, and deftly empties it below his feet as the stone floor comes rushing up to meet him. He wastes no time in taking out his own sword, and after a moment’s hesitation, tosses George his.  
Their eyes meet, narrowed and ready to fight the army of hostile creatures scuttling towards them from the shadows. Dream realizes that all of a sudden, there’s no hatred, no snide comments out of habit. They’re unified in their fight, and it makes all of their previous bickering seem stupid and meaningless.   
Dream tilts his head to the left clump of creepers. “I got these guys. Take the right? If they ignite, don’t try and fight. Just run, and I’ll be right behind you.”  
George nods, not questioning Dream taking the lead. He turns around, and they stand back-to-back, swords outstretched as the mobs advance.  
-  
The first brave creeper makes a move on George, and he dispatches it easily, slicing clean through it with his blade. There’s a subtle hiss as it crumbles into dust, leaving a small pile of gunpowder on the cave floor. Dream kicks a stray torch out of his way and opts to go offensive, lashing out at the closest creeper without provocation. It fizzles angrily, but thank goodness, doesn’t ignite. Dream yells a war cry and stabs it right between the eyes.

Meanwhile, George’s creepers are angry about their friend. They circle him, drawing him away from Dream and towards the dead end of a cave wall. He swipes, and they dodge. One scuttles at his left shoulder, and George performs a tricky sword move that leaves it in ribbons. He finishes off the other three without much difficulty, then spins in a circle, checking for more enemies. He finds only the empty darkness beyond the torchlight, and a triumphant Dream catching his breath. Without much thought, George goes in for a celebratory high-five, but Dream only stares blankly at his raised hand. Cheeks flaming red, George scratches the back of his neck and kicks a pile of gunpowder moodily.

“No, no, go ahead,” Dream says, words overlapping as they tumble out, “one hit won’t kill me. I kind of deserve it, anyway, I was being a douche earlier.”  
George can’t believe his ears. “I was trying to high-five you, not punch you, you absolute buffoon. Jesus, who knew a guy called Nightmare would be the stupidest criminal in all the kingdom?”  
“I’m not stupid,” Dream retaliates, but he’s smiling a little now, and he fixes his tilted mask in a sheepish sort of way. “You can still give me a good punch, if you want.”  
“Well, you telling me I can kind of ruins the experience. Let’s forget about it.”  
“Sounds perfect. Now, give me the sword.”

George’s grip on his trusty weapon tightens. “Come on, dude, if I was going to kill you, I would have done it five minutes ago. Please? You said you would need my help, you said so! And look where we are now!” He knows he sounds pathetic, but he doesn’t care. Falling into a damp, dark cave with hissing creepers had reminded him just how powerless he is without his gear. He might not be able to permanently die, but it doesn’t mean the experience is pleasant. He’s never been blown up by a creeper, and he never intends to cross it off the bingo card.

Dream chews his lip. “I won’t tie your hands up again, since that’s how you fell down here, but I’m not giving you your sword.”  
“Don’t you trust me?” George bats his eyelashes jokingly.  
Dream gives an exaggerated retch. “No. You’re my prisoner.” He strides over and grabs the sword, sliding it into the left side of his belt. “If you see a monster, yell. It was funny to hear you scream like a ghast anyway.”  
“I did not!”  
“You did so. The cave acoustics really helped.”

They continue to bicker as Dream scoops up handfuls of gunpowder from the floor, depositing it into a leather pouch around his waist. George, meanwhile, sets up torches around the cave, marking entrances to each of the many different tunnels with a small stone. Finally, Dream declares that they’re ready to explore. There’s no oppressive silence anymore, no shooting daggers at each other’s turned backs. Sometimes all it takes is a good fight to right all the past wrongs of the day. In his head, George accepts defeat in his internal struggle. The man he was chasing was Nightmare, but now that he’s seen him, properly spoken to him, he’s Dream. When the time comes, he’ll have to become Nightmare again, George realizes. However, that’s a long ways away. Playing it cool, going along with whatever Dream is planning— that’s what’s gotten him this far. What’s the harm in being friendly? It’s not like he expects it to last, and George knows that they both long for conversation. Bad would encourage it, in fact, if he could. He finishes his tasks and returns to Dream’s side with a new surety in his step.

They pick a tunnel at random and start to descend deeper and deeper into the Earth. Aside from a few bats (Dream calls them cute, and George tries not to shudder at the flap of their leathery wings) and one zombie, which soon finds its head severed neatly from its body, Dream and George remain mostly undisturbed as they clamber through small crevices and chip away at pockets of coal and iron dotting the walls.  
Finally, the tunnel opens back up, and they find themselves in a large cave similar to the one George first fell into. What’s interesting, though, isn’t the glittering lapis in the ceiling, the shimmering gold veins running across the floor and peeking out from within the stone walls, or even the skeleton already scrambling to load its bow. It’s… 

“Lava!” Dream laughs gleefully. “Finally! That took SO long, oh my GOD…”  
“Bigger problem,” says George, ducking behind Dream’s taller, broader figure, “there’s a skeleton and you have both the swords.”  
The skeleton doesn’t even have time to fire the first arrow, so eager is Dream to get to the bubbling lava pool lapping at the stone incline. He kills it with a careless sword swipe and runs to the lava, skidding on the gravel and knocking a few pebbles into its crackling blood-red surface. Dream gives a whoop that echoes around the cave. George hangs back, enjoying the warmth but not wanting to get too close. He’s never seen Dream this pleased. 

“You’ve got your lava. Now what?”

“You haven’t figured it out?” Dream dusts off his trousers and unclasps his cape, already unpacking their things from his bag. George feels much more relaxed than he ever had in the savannah, and Dream looks the same. His flushed neck now has more of a rosy glow, and the laboured breathing of hot air is over. George goes to help him, staring at the staticky mess that is Dream’s shaggy blonde hair. He shakes his head, and Dream gives a low laugh.  
“We’re going to block off this place, and get some sleep. Then, tomorrow morning,” if George could see Dream’s eyes, he knows they would be crackling with just as much fire as the white-hot lava,  
“we’re going to the Nether.”


	5. Blue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ayo, 'i hate my own writing' gang where you at?  
> i'm so sorry for taking so long to write this chapter. i'm honestly still not happy with it, and the tone of this story is shifting into something much more lighthearted and dialogue-focused than i originally planned. be prepared for weird sporadic bits of descriptive prose among the rest lol.  
> hope you're all having a fantastic day!  
> (by the way, i read THE fanfic a few days ago, and i think i spontaneously combusted lmao, despite not liking super romance/shipping fics)  
> \- author (she/her)

“No, no way,” are the first words Dream hears when he wakes up. He squints up through the gloom of the cave to see a figure leaning over him, breathing right into his face. He swats George away with his hand. This man is going to be the death of me, he thinks miserably, before realizing that that honor will be falling to the King. Wow. Great thought to start the day with. He throws his fur blanket to the side, sending the cloud of cave dust that’s accumulated through the night right into the squinting Brit’s face. He pushes himself backwards, coughing   
“Go away. It’s not like you have a choice.”  
“This is insane! You’re insane!” George hoists himself onto his feet and paces back and forth. Dream rubs his eyes and stretches as his captive complains. “You’re actually crazy. The Nether? We’re going to the NETHER? Do you have any idea how dangerous--”  
“Yes, I do, Lost Boy,” snaps Dream, “more than you do. I know this is dangerous, which is why I don’t want to drag you along with me. However,” his back cracks alarmingly as he stands, “I don’t have a choice.”  
George’s ears perk up, and his eyes glimmer hopefully. “You could just let me go.”  
Dream hastily turns his derisive laugh into a hacking cough. “As if.”

“Come oooooon,” George whines, throwing himself back down on his fur blanket, “you don’t want me here, I don’t want to be here, and it sounds like a fair deal to me. I can just tell the King you got away or something.”  
It’s too early for this, thinks Dream. He tosses a small stone across the cave, and it lands in the lava with a satisfying ‘plop’.  
“No. Let me see what we’ve got.”

Dream takes inventory of what tools they have, pulling them out of the bag and placing them in a neat row on the ground. He instructs George to polish them, tossing him a piece of fabric. George sits cross-legged by the lava, humming away as he picks out a dirt stain on Dream’s trusty iron sword. Same make and model as his own, he notices. Must be from the castle blacksmith.  
It seems odd to George that they lived so close to one another, and yet so far. They must have so much in common, and yet here they are, sworn enemies… George wonders if he’s ever passed Dream on the street. He wonders what his face is like under the mask, whether he ever spoke to him, if they would have been friends in another life.

Stop daydreaming, George tells himself, he’s Nightmare. He might be a real person now, rather than the fabled hunter everyone in the castle village was terrified of, but it’s not going to help to dwell on that right before you need to betray him.   
Is it a betrayal if he’s technically still Dream’s hostage? Is it betrayal if he tells himself they’re not allies?  
George gives the sword a rather forceful scrub, and the last of the dirt finally disappears. He hands it back to Dream, who tosses him a heap of cloth in return.  
“Your bag. I’ve cleared it out by now, but I might need you to carry stuff for me.”  
“I’m not your... your handmaiden, you know that?”  
“Not yet.” Dream winks, and George restrains himself from putting the satchel over his head. “Here’s a half-broken pickaxe, you won’t be able to land a single blow on me with this. We need gold before we leave, enough for eight bars.”  
“Why?” George grabs the tool and heads over to a vein of gold running through the far wall. He begins carefully chipping away. Play along, he chants inside his head, act dumb.  
“Piglins.”  
“Right! It’s their attack patterns?”

Dream looks surprised, and slightly impressed. “Yup. They’ll let us pass them if we look like we’re on their side.”  
A dark thought crosses George’s mind as he collects his first lump of gold. “We aren’t going to kill any of them, are we? Not if they’re peaceful.”  
Dream shrugs. “If it’s self-defence, or they have something we really need, we might have to. Otherwise, I don’t like killing things.”  
“Could have sworn it was the opposite.”  
Dream’s scowl is visible from across the cave. “The King told you that one?”  
“Maybe,” replies George. “Why do you care?”  
Dream hunches over a little, picking through the contents of his bag with a little less energy. “Don’t believe everything you hear about me.”  
George feels bad, but he’s too stubborn to apologize, especially after their argument the day before. Two different worlds, he reminds himself. We know nothing about each other, really. 

They mine the gold in silence, and Dream sets up a crafting bench to make gold boots. He doesn’t hammer and chisel with the brute force of the blacksmiths at the castle, George notices, peeking over his shoulder on the tips of his toes. He almost looks like he’s playing an instrument, or weaving. His hands work quickly and deftly at tasks that George doesn’t understand.  
Finally, he feels the need to break the silence. “I wonder if the King’s sent someone else out by now.”  
Dream’s distracted, but he still takes the time to respond. “New hunters, you mean? No way, he wouldn’t.”  
“Why not?” George persists, “surely he’s realized I’m trapped.”  
“Trapped,” Dream snorts, “Alright then. But no, he really wouldn’t. He used to every once in a while, like I told you, but he wouldn’t have two people out here at once looking. He doesn’t trust groups, doesn’t like when they start having conversations without him around to hear them.” The edge is back in Dream’s voice. He almost spits his last sentence, but takes a moment to calm down, running a tense hand through his hair and pulling his hood farther over his forehead.

“You ever wonder where the compass in your bag is from?”  
George’s eyebrows disappear into his hairline. “You’ve figured it out?” he blurts out involuntarily.  
“Yes, I know how it works,” says Dream. “I helped design it. It was my first project for the King.” George can’t even form the words to ask him what he means.  
Dream holds the compass up for him to see, the multicolored shimmer of its enchantments refracting on the cave walls. “You only used it for tracking me, but there’s a lot more that it can do.”  
He clears his throat. “Find me a skeleton.” The needle jerks, then spins towards one of the blocked-off tunnels, unwavering.   
“How did you do that?” harrumphs George, snatching the object back from Dream’s calloused palm. “It never let me find mobs.”  
“That’s the trick. It took me a long time to enchant, but it only answers your commands when it knows you get what you’re doing.”  
“That makes no sense at all,” George says, shaking the compass to reset it.   
“Find me a skeleton!” Just like that, the object obeys, swiveling to the cobblestone barrier where the distant sound of clinking bones can be heard. “Huh…” George refuses to be impressed, and Dream goes back to his work  
.  
George fools around with the compass a little more, Dream telling him bits and pieces of what it can do and George trying them out for himself.  
George tentatively asks him after a while, “what did you do at the castle?”  
“Oh, I was a redstone engineer, a bit of an enchanter, and I did some hunter training for a while,” says Dream, trying on his first finished boot and hopping around the cave on one leg. “I made my mask, I made the tracking compasses, and all of the weapons in the vault are mine—“  
George interrupts him. “No way, you can’t tell me that!”  
Dream snorts, lacing the boot a little tighter and resuming his frenzied hopping. “What?”  
“That’s all classified,” insists George, “I’m not supposed to know anything about the vaults.”  
Dream looks at him with disgust. “You’re such a goody-two-shoes. He’s not here, what is he going to do about it?”  
George hesitates.   
“He always finds stuff out. I don’t care what you call me, it’s wrong.”  
Dream shakes his head. “Then why did you even bring it up? You’re not gonna learn all my deep dark secrets, and I don’t care about yours. I just need you to fight blaze for me.”  
“Good,” says George, trying to ignore the sting of the dismissal, “I don't care either. Make your stupid portal. I won’t even ask you what you’re getting blaze rods for.”  
Dream stays silent, stalking around in his new boots. He practically throws George his pair, and nearly breaks his first bucket as he attempts to make obsidian. It takes almost an hour of steam, hissing, Dream swearing like a sailor, and George moping in the corner refusing to help, but there’s finally a dark oval of obsidian looming seven feet tall against the far wall, a thin wooden bridge circling the side of the lava pool to its base. 

“Get up, Lost Boy,” grumbles Dream. “And thanks for your help, by the way.”  
George keeps his nose up in the air and his eyes averted as he marches to stand beside him at the portal. Dream checks both of their bags one last time, then pulls out a rough chunk of flint and a smooth c-shaped piece of steel. He gives them an experimental tap together, and there’s the quickest flash of a spark. He turns to George, looking frightening with the fire-starter in his hands and his mouth scowling in the shadow of his mask.  
“Don’t push me into a lava pool. I can promise you won’t beat me in a fight in the Nether.”

Without further ado, he cracks the flint and steel, and a tiny golden spark flicks into the space between the uneven obsidian blocks. There’s a mighty roar that seems to come from the very inside of George’s head, bouncing off the inside of his skull, and then a deep humming, like a thousand fires burning a million miles away. The space inside the portal grows fuzzy, seems to spin and stretch like fabric, then, as quick as a wink, vanishes. A translucent purple wall appears, between the two of them, and the stone wall marking the far side of their cave. George blinks, the bright and colourful sight blurring his vision and making him dizzy. He looks at his feet, and the leather laces woven through his gold boots. 

Dream takes his upper arm, not hurting him, but digging into his skin just the tiniest bit, as if reminding him who’s in control. “After you,” George quips, but instead, Dream drags George into the technicolour veil with him. George gasps. It’s like stepping into ice-cold water, and George can barely breathe. Forign sounds are filling his ears, and he squeezes his eyes shut to block out the topsy-turvy world. Dream’s hand keeps a firm grip on him, and George unconsciously leans closer, desperate to stay upright. He stumbles the tiniest bit, and collides with Dream’s form, stoic and unmoving. He feels Dream’s other hand move to his back, steadying him.   
He’s a seasoned pro at this, thinks George. What maniac would ever go through this more than once? A maniac called Nightmare, I guess.  
Suddenly, the background humming swells and surrounds George, and he feels his insides being dragged through the fabric of space, whizzing through the cracks in the pavement of the world and landing… somewhere entirely different.

And then it’s over. George’s head clears, and he takes a huge gasp of warm air. Dream lets go of him, and George tentatively opens his eyes.  
He’s seen the Nether in paintings, and had it described to him and Sapnap by Bad, who was fortunate enough to have traveled there with the King, but no amount of adjectives could do justice to just how… dark it is. Fires crackle at random intervals along the ground, and the dark, mottled red of the netherrack stretches out in all directions, the ceiling lost in a haze and illuminated only by massive glowstone crystals pulsing with a weak golden light.  
Of course, that’s not even half of what George sees, hears, smells, all of his senses being assaulted by the vast amount of unfamiliar information, but it’s all he notices for the moment. Most of all, he’s wondering why in the blaze anyone, especially Dream, would want to be here.

Dream shakes off the usual motion sickness, then runs his hands over his items out of habit, feeling his array of multicolored potions clink together, hanging in a neatly organised row at his belt. The familiar sensation is calming.  
They’ve spawned on the edge of a netherrack outcrop, a giant open space with a huge lava lake below. Looking out over the space, there’s the netherrack wall to the right, with lots of zombie pigmen milling about, and to the left, the outcropping winds this way and that. Into the distance, a blue forest biome stretches out, a place that Dream has seen before in his various adventures in the Nether, but has never entered. He hopes this isn’t the day he’s forced to-- the giant warthogs running around scare him a little.

Meanwhile, George is thinking hard. Pushing Dream into the lava and escaping is a possible plan, but he’s a bit creeped out by the Nether so far, and Dream’s green cloak and mask look creepy in the dim lighting. His trousers and tunic only highlight his height and obvious strength. George is reminded that Dream has trained much longer than him, and although he might have an odd laugh and say things that make him seem almost normal, he’s still a highly skilled super-fighter that could take him out in an instant.  
George is wrestling with himself, trying to convince himself that killing someone won’t be all that bad, when Dream finally speaks. “Let’s go to the left.”   
That snaps him out of it. Still, George is looking for an opening.

They move quietly through the Nether, trying not to attack the attention of the pigmen, and only speaking when absolutely necessary. They get a few stares from the Piglins but thanks to their gold boots, they’re left alone. George wonders if he’d ever have gotten to the Nether if not for Dream. Then, of course, he stops himself, before his animosity towards the man loses its edge. You’ve been having to do that a lot, his brain snickers, and George resists the urge to fling himself into the lava below him.

Well, Dream thinks, it looks like today, I’ll be crossing the final frontier. He smiles at the thought, but feels a sick bubble of anxiety form in his stomach. What on Earth could a radioactive-looking forest have in store?   
“Are we… going in there?” George asks as they approach the first stretch of mossy teal ground. Dream clears his throat, trying to look as casual as possible. For the millionth time, he’s grateful for his mask.  
“We’re gonna have to. Better suck it up.”  
Dream sees George’s Adam’s apple bob, and his eyes dart from the gently rippling green vines hanging off the trees, to the burgundy veins running through the wood. He looks as nervous as me, Dream realizes, and that makes him feel the tiniest bit better.

“Here.” Without thinking, he unstraps George’s sword from his sheath, and offers it to him, toe tapping nervously. It takes a moment, but George’s hand eventually reaches out to close around the hilt, finally taking back his prized weapon.   
George is staring, Dream realizes, and he scratches the back of his neck, tugging on his mask. “What?” he snaps.  
George blinks. “I’m starting to think you’re actually insane. In the span of, like, an hour, you’ve let me know how little of a shit you give about my dark secrets or whatever, and now I have my sword. Do you see how this could be a problem for you?”  
Dream sighs, marching determinedly on towards the blue forest. “You talk a lot of talk, but you couldn’t even do one heart.”  
“Oh yeah?” George practically runs to keep up with Dream’s long legs. “Is that a challenge?”  
“No. I will kill you.”  
George snorts. “Alright. Way to make friends.”

Stop, Dream wants to scream at him, stop being nice to me! Why aren’t you scared of me? Why don’t you run away like everybody else?   
“You’re the worst manhunter I’ve ever seen. I’ve already forgotten I was supposed to be escaping from you.”

They dive into the blue and green undergrowth, trampling on a neon carpet of mushrooms and inhaling their first breaths of thick air. There’s the rotting sweetness of decay in the air, and the hollow noises of the rest of the Nether are muffled and far away. It really feels like they’ve stepped into a new world, where the air is clouded with pale blue spores that catch in George’s eyelashes and cover Dream’s mask.

It takes George a few more paces to realize that he can see much more than usual.  
“Stop,” he tells Dream, “look at this mushroom.”   
Dream squints at where George is pointing. It’s a bright crimson toadstool poking out from underneath a fallen log, dotted with turquoise spots. “What about it?”  
“What… what colour is it?”  
“Red…?”  
“That’s RED?”  
Dream’s worried that the effects of portal travel might not have worn off. “What’s wrong, George?”  
“I…” George gapes like a fish out of water. “I’m colourblind. I can’t see red.”  
There’s a moment of absolute silence, where George’s words settle into both of their heads. George’s eyes twist and turn wildly, starting to take in a whole new explosion of colour. It’s like new shades and tints are appearing right in front of his eyes. He completes a spin around, shell-shocked, then turns back to Dream and almost leaps up in astonishment.  
“Your cape! It’s SO GREEN, oh my GOD!”

Dream giggles, an unusual sound for him, but he can’t help it. George is like a little kid at the zoo, narrating everything he sees. “Took you long enough to figure that out.”  
George makes another slow circle, shaking his head. “This is… how is this possible? Everything was normal a minute ago.”  
“Could it be the forest?” Dream suggests. “I wouldn’t be surprised if those spores did something to your vision, we’ve breathed in a lot of them already.”  
“Probably…” In reality, George couldn’t care less about inhaling possibly toxic spores, if it meant that he could see emerald green cloaks and red mushrooms. “I don’t even want to leave now.”  
That breaks the spell. Dream’s grin vanishes as he remembers his mission, and the ticking clock for success. “Come on, let’s keep walking,” he mumbles, “you can be an idiot once I have ten blaze rods.”  
“About those,” says George, skipping ahead down a path only he can see, “why do you need them?”  
“Deep dark secrets, remember?”  
And they continue on through the forest, hacking away at plants that land in their way, George shouting about some new mushroom every five seconds. It’s slow progress, but it’s there, and no creatures disturb them.

It’s been a couple of hours when Dream trips over a log and lands face-first in the moss. He pushes himself back up, laughing, and George joins in. He slings an arm around George’s shoulders, pulling him to his side as they take a very wobbly step in tandem. “Wha-- why was that so-- so funny?” gasps George, tears streaming down his face. “The real question is,” chokes out Dream, barely able to breathe with laughter, “why does everything keep spinning? It’s like I’m drunk or-- or something.” They cackle and shake each other, neither one of them capable of any more rational thought after breathing in the not-so-harmless spores for hours.

“Wait, stop, lemme see your cape again--” George tugs on the fabric thrown over Dream’s shoulder a bit too harshly, and doesn’t even have time to react before it slips off altogether, the clasp unfastening and his hood falling off. Dream’s mask, already lopsided from his hysterical laughing, is tugged down with the hood, and falls down, hanging looped around Dream’s neck.   
Time seems to stop, both of them freezing comically in place. George slowly, ever so slowly, looks into Dream’s eyes…

And realizes they’re three times larger than usual. His face warps, neck elongating as George stares, and ears turning into blue and red mushrooms. The sight is so ridiculous that George’s mouth twitches again, and he bursts back into laughter, nearly hitting his head on a tree as he stumbles backwards.   
“Your--your face,” he chokes out, “it looks so weird!”  
“So does yours,” Dream says obnoxiously, giving him a playful shove. “You’re such an idiot!” He’s completely unbothered by his exposed face. Dazed and unfocused, they continue down whatever path they were following.  
After about ten minute, Dream speaks. “Do you know where we’re going?”  
“No,” huffs George, “I was following YOU. I’m your prisoner, silly boy.” He chops at a random vine, narrowly missing his own head with his blade.  
“I’m really tired, and I don’t remember anything.”  
George frowns, his last trace of lucidity trickling away. “Me neither. My head hurts.”

Without further ado, Dream picks a large warped tree to their left, and plops down at its base. He pats the ground next to him, smiling at George.  
“Come sit. We can go to sleep for a little while.”  
“No beds?” George sinks to the ground obediently. He can almost feel himself being wrapped up in a nice warm fur, but Dream shakes his head.  
“Nah, they explode or something. I can’t really remember…” he trails off with a giggle.  
A minute passes in silence. George feels tiny spores land on his cheeks like snowflakes. With every sound muffled and his head filled with a vague, content nothingness, it’s peaceful, a word he never would have associated with the Nether.

When he opens his eyes to stretch his legs out in front of him, Dream is slumped morosely against the tree trunk, and turquoise tears are running down his hazy cheeks. George feels worry bloom in his stomach, amplified enough that he doesn’t have the strength to disguise it. He immediately sits up straight, and shuffles closer. “Why are you crying?”  
“I used to be the King’s right-hand man,” Dream sniffs, “his friend! We used to talk about how to make the kingdom a better place… I used to CARE about him! Can you believe that?”  
George holds his tongue, processing Dream’s unexpected honesty through a drug-riddled fog. Dream’s shoulders shake as he sobs, each cry piercing the silence of the forest.

“I didn’t want to leave. My best friends were there! I loved those guys so much and now I’ll never see them again! I have to hide my face, so nobody recognizes me, and I never talk to anyone these days. I have no friends anymore. All I have is my mission. All I have is my last great adventure, to hopefully do some good for the kingdom before I get tired of running. At least I have a GeorgeNotFound to keep me company on the way.” Dream lets out a sob, and leans his head back against the tree. George looks away, blinking rapidly at the swirl of bright color that is the world around him. What was that entire conversation? Nothing Dream just said makes sense to George at all.

“What’s the adventure, Dream? Where are we going?” George slurs.  
Dream curls up on the ground like a fox, giving a last, shuddering sigh. “Beyond,” he mumbles, before promptly falling asleep. With no one to talk to, and no energy to shake Dream back awake, George drifts off too. The warped blue trees curl inwards towards the pair, protecting their unconscious forms from the pale blue snow drifting down, still whispering Dream’s enigmatic last word among themselves in the language of the deep.


	6. Fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heyyyyyyy please ignore the fact that i haven't updated in forever.  
> i read a fanfic called 'green and gold' the other day, and realized that it's basically everything i wanted this story to be, except better in every way lol. shoutout to the author of that fic!  
> hope you're all doing well, i hope you enjoy this filler-ish chapter. i promise that i actually have a plan for this story, it's just taking me longer than i expected to get it all sorted out!  
> ps. as time goes on, i will be going back and HEAVILY editing/rewriting everything... it's just the way i roll: write my first draft in one sitting at 3am, then edit two weeks later and completely change everything up! pogchamp gamers!  
> \- author (she/her)
> 
> ALSO: i am not a self-promo person, but... as the great tommyinnit would say, i am in the mood for some likes.  
> i have another epic story i'm writing called Radioactive!  
> it is so much better than this story, i promise, and i'm really proud of it so far.  
> also a dreamnotfound and da homies story, so if you'd like more of that good stuff...  
> (;

When George wakes up, Dream is already awake. His mask and hood are back on, and he’s clutching a bottle of fuschia liquid tightly in his hands. George watches sleepily as he lifts the bottle, wrapped in his calloused palms, to his mouth, and takes a long drink. The freckles on his chin stand out against the pale tinge of his skin, and he reaches beneath his mask to rub at his eyes with the back of his hand. 

With a great effort, George sits up, and without thinking much of it, reaches for the regen potion. Dream immediately draws it away from him, tensing up, but George quickly raises his arms in a gesture of surrender when he remembers his situation. He’s surprised to still feel the weight of his sword at his hip. Enemies, he reminds himself. I’m just waiting for the right moment.

Quietly, Dream gives George the potion, and he downs the rest in one gulp. George shudders as the fizzy liquid enters his bloodstream, and his hearts start to jump back up from where they had been dangerously low the previous night. At least, George thinks they were.  
“What went on yesterday?” George asks. He looks up at the distant ceiling, and squints into the dim fog. “Was it yesterday? How long were we out?”  
Dream shrugs, meticulously rearranging his bottles. “I dunno.”

George stands up, and feels the cuts on his arms from the blue bark of the warped trees stretch. He hisses in pain as the regeneration potion begins its work, spreading a numbness over his wounds and scabbing over the broken skin.

“Did I, uh, say anything weird?” George probes, hoping that his giggly under-the-influence self wasn’t too embarrassing. Dream sighs, clearly still feeling the effects of whatever hell-spores they breathed.  
“No, I-- I honestly don’t remember anything. We were in the forest, and then you got really excited, for some reason, and then I just woke up and we were here. My head is pounding like a motherfucker, though, so I guess we were pretty drugged.”

“Yeah, totally,” says George warily. He can remember everything: from seeing new colours to Dream tripping to their weird heartfelt conversation under this very tree. Still, when he tries closing his eyes and seeing what happened, his memory fails him. Hearing? Perfect. But he can’t remember what Dream’s face looked like, and he can’t seem to recall any of the greens or reds he saw for the first time. He gives a frustrated huff. Is Dream lying? He can’t tell.

They have an awkward first few hours, with Dream being sluggish and forgetful, almost leaving his pouch of gunpowder in the moss, and George moping over the loss of the only benefits he had gained from the forest’s spores-- besides Dream’s rambling about the King and his mission. Still, the Nether takes pity on them as they maneuver their way out of the blue undergrowth, and they don’t fall prey to the spores’ effects again. With a full sleep under their belts, they find their way through the forest easily, and find themselves stepping back onto netherrack, out of the surreal, muffled bubble of the woods.

Even without thick vines and the miasma of a radioactive jungle, it’s awkward. George is still trying to convince himself that he doesn’t care-- about Dream, about his quest, and about the eeriness of the Nether.

Their search for the fortress continues in silence. The steep path winding around the edges of the lava ocean finally gives way to ground that’s a bit firmer, and the sides of the Nether narrow and twist into different paths, some scarcely more than cracks in the towering ruby walls. Dream picks the widest one, zig-zagging off straight ahead through the rock, and George follows without complaint.

An oinking disturbs their walk, both of them pausing. George’s hand is already at his sword, but Dream simply smiles.  
“Finally,” he whispers to George, “piglins. We can trade with them!”  
He leaps ahead, and George picks up the pace as well. After about a minute of jogging, they round a sharp corner and the group of odd creatures appears, standing in a circle by a side dotted with chunks of gold. If they notice the intruders right away, they don’t seem to care. Their eyes pass over the two men with disinterest, and they continue grumbling among themselves. George supposes it must be their language, with a start of recognition.

Dream rummages through his bag, and George knows he’s hunting through his inventory for something stashed away. He gives a satisfied noise, and, with a flourish, pulls out the gold bars they had smelted back in the cave.

Immediately, the mood shifts. George is keenly aware of several pairs of beady eyes locked on him, darting back and forth from their boots, to their faces, to the gold. They have the Piglins’ interest.  
“Hi,” ventures Dream, extending his hand with the gold in it and taking a cautious step forward. The creatures grunt and blink, but don’t seem to understand. Dream tries again, speaking in a polite tone George has never heard him use.

“Can we trade with you? Do you have any ender pearls?” His words are met with no recognition from the Piglins.  
“Can I try?” George speaks up in an unusual bout of self-confidence. He goes to stand beside Dream, raising his arm to touch Dream’s shoulder before remembering who he is.  
“No,” grumbles Dream, tugging on his curls in frustration.  
“Dude, trust me!” George moves decisively in front of him, crossing his arms to block Dream from advancing any further. “I know it’s stupid, but you have to trust me.”  
Dream looks fed up, shoving the gold into the shorter man’s hands without another word. “Go ahead,” he sighs, “there’s no point.”

George rolls his eyes. This bitch, he thinks, always assuming he’s the smartest guy in the room. It’s usually true, but it doesn’t get rid of the bitchiness of it.  
“Hello,” he says to the piglins in Deepspeak, “we have gold to trade.”  
He could swear, out of the corner of his eye, that he sees Dream’s neck snap back around to him. Smirking slightly, he focuses back on the leader of the piglins, clutching a loaded crossbow and wearing a robe of animal hide. He inclines his head respectfully.  
“What would you like in return?” The piglin asks.   
“Ender pearls, if you have them.”

The deal flows smoothly after that: George’s Deepspeak is pretty proficient, and the piglins are so hungry to get their hands on Dream’s smoothly forged gold bars that they’ll take any deal. George hands over all of their gold, and in return, four smooth, slightly slimy green orbs are dropped into his palms. George turns them over, marveling at the black depths of the pupils. He’s never seen an ender pearl so close up before-- he’s never killed an Enderman himself, and wouldn’t dare look anywhere near their eyes. 

He hears footsteps stomp up behind him, and then Dream reaches over his shoulder and snatches the pearls out of his hand. George splutters, but Dream says nothing, just gives a contrite wave to the piglins and beckons for George to follow along. They wind around jagged overhangs of netherrack, and find themselves alone again.

Dream finally talks directly to George. “How did you know how to talk to them? I didn’t even know they had their own language.”  
George shrugs. “One of my friends, BadBo-- erm, my hunting trainer, he’s been to the Nether before. With the King, a while back, I think. What he knows is much better than any of the books in that dusty old library.”  
Dream snorts. “You actually read those?”  
George scowls. “Most of them, actually.”  
Dream shakes his head, but says nothing. 

In his head, he’s thinking about how George ended up being useful to him after all. He knew that two people would be better than one regardless of skill level, but it seems like, in some ways, George has him beat. Reading books and having friends were not on the list of potential hidden hunter skills Dream had thought up, but that makes them even better.   
They team up and kill an enderman (George mostly prodding it with his sword and making high-pitched noises, while Dream hacks away at its thick purple skin with impunity). It drops two pearls, bringing them to six. The netherrack seems to stretch on forever, and George asks Dream if the compass could show them where a fortress is.   
“No,” sighs Dream, “I only designed it to track people. It can’t find anything that isn’t alive, and it’s not designed to find mobs, either, even though it can if you need it to. Just people.”

The hours stretch by, and every time they turn a corner, George expects to see a wall of nether brick staring at them. But that doesn’t happen, and the jagged cavern they were traversing widens into another vast open area, with a red forest stretching into the distance this time.   
“No way are we going in there,” says George, shaking his head. “I hated the blue forest, and we don’t even know what the red forest could have floating around in it. Maybe it’s poison!”  
Dream’s frowning, surveying the area carefully. His jaw tenses. “I don’t think we have a choice. There’s no other way around the lake, and we don’t have the time or resources to climb all the way into the ceiling and dig past it. Forest it is.” He starts toward the trees, but George stops him.

“Wait!”  
Dream taps his foot impatiently. “You have a better idea?”  
George blinks at him. “Yes, actually, I do. Speedbridging!”  
Dream scoffs. “Oh come on now. How many blocks have you got?”  
George rummages through his satchel, devoid of food or potions, but stuffed full of netherrack. “Three stacks,” he says, “plenty enough to get across the lava. It’s one of the things I was trained to do, in case you ever had a boat and I didn’t. Looks like it’s finally useful.”  
“Alright,” Dream relents, hearing the determination in George’s voice, “but you better not get us killed. Lava is nasty.”  
George’s eyes bulge out of his head. “You know?”  
“Well, yeah,” Dream gives a casual shrug, “I didn’t spawn yesterday.”

George says nothing, only unpacks his netherrack and steps towards the edge of the simmering red vat. Carefully, oh so carefully, he inches forward, until his toes hang off the edge of the ground, and places the first netherrack stepping stone. He prods it with his toe until he’s sure it’s safe, then places another. Dream follows him cautiously, but finds that the block can easily handle their combined weight. He lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

George slowly but surely picks up the pace, until he’s placing his next block with ease, barely glancing at the ground, or lack thereof, below him. Dream squashes down his admiration. I could do that, he thinks. If it was just me, I would have thought of this. Eventually.

They’re about halfway across the lake when he spots it, gasping and thrusting his long arm in its direction, almost knocking George in the head. “There it is! There’s the fortress!”  
It takes George’s eyes a few more tries before he catches the thick, dark pillar rising out of the churning red pool to the left, almost obscured by the gloom of the cavern. There’s no mistaking it, though, it’s the Nether fortress. Dream lets out a whoop and dances around on the spot.  
“What a nerd,” George grumbles loud enough for him to hear, but Dream doesn’t reply. He’s too high on success, a little prematurely, George thinks.

“Slow down,” he tells the masked man, whose grin stretches so wide it reaches each smooth side of the oval contraption, “there’s still a long ways to go, and I only have a stack left. Got any blocks on you?”  
“No, I left them all back in the cave. Didn’t expect to need them, but hey, who cares? I feel like I could jump across this whole lake right now if I tried!”  
“Please don’t,” begs George. To him, it seems like a real possibility that Dream might try. 

George shuffles past him on the thin walkway they’ve created, and begins placing blocks meticulously to the left, aiming right for the crumbling entrance to the fortress towering hundreds of blocks above the bubbling mass below it.   
Dream, however, is getting impatient. “Hurry up, dude,” he gripes, shifting his weight from one foot to the other as he itches to overtake George.  
“Shut up, I’m being careful,” says George, not really listening. He sets his next block with so much care and precision that it makes Dream snap, with a mixture of excited stupidity and annoyance. 

“Hurry up, we haven’t got all blazing day--” He sidesteps the shorter man and intends to turn and snatch the stack of blocks out of his hand, but as he moves, his foot catches on an uneven bit of netherrack. Dream’s eyes widen as he begins to fall face-first into the lava. He screws his eyes shut, already cursing himself for his mistake, and waiting for the searing heat and agony of being burnt alive, but when a few seconds pass and nothing happens, he opens his eyes again.

George is stock-still, panting, his hand gripping a fistful of Dream’s cloak. The edges of it are singing and twisting in their proximity to the lava, but Dream’s heels are still, barely, on the path. With every muscle in his body tensing so hard it hurts, Dream heaves himself upright and stumbles forward into George’s hands. He find himself pleasantly surprised when the older wraps his arms around him, heart pounding almost as fast as Dream’s.

They stay that way for a moment, processing, until George realizes the position they’re in and clears his throat, stepping away from Dream and immediately launching into a tirade of accusations and profanity.

“What the FUCK was THAT, Dream?! Huh? You somehow THOUGHT, your ego was SO inflated that--”  
Once again, Dream’s brain automatically tunes him out, still absorbing the shock of his near miss. Once he’s come to terms with it, he feels embarrassed. For the first time in the Nether, he’s glad to have his sweaty mask on, so that George can’t see his mortification.  
“... IRRESPONSIBLE, RUDE and downright STUPID thing to do! Do you UNDERSTAND?”  
“Yes, GeorgeNotFound,” Dream mumbles, feeling rather like he’s being scolded by his friends at the castle again. That thought sends him into another wave of emotion, and he clamps it all down to address what’s right in front of him.  
“I’m sorry. You’re right, that was stupid.”

There’s a moment of silence, where the hollow noises of the upside-down world they’re in seem to reverberate extra loudly in the vast open space.

“Well?” George demands. Dream blinks.   
“Well what?”  
George crosses his arms. “Aren’t you going to thank me for saving your life?”  
Dream rolls his eyes, knowing George can’t see it. “Thank you for saving my life. Can we keep going?”  
George huffs, but resumes his speedbridging, and nothing else of note happens until they reach the base of the pillar.

George cranes his neck upwards, shading his eyes with his hand. “It’s a long way up. How will we get up there? I’m pretty much out of blocks.”  
Dream sighs, having prepared for this. “We’re just going to have to climb up. I heard that ancient places like this don’t like modern enchantments or redstone, and they’ll throw us out if we try anything other than, well, the old-fashioned way.”  
George stares. “Sounds like a fishwives’ tale to me.”  
“Whatever. I’m not letting anything screw up my chances. Let’s eat a bit first, though. Nearly dying sure does work up an appetite.”

They sit in the heat of the lava, and eat the last of Dream’s stale bread. George eyes Dream’s strength and speed potions longingly, but doesn’t mention them. If Dream wants to ruin his fancy quest by following old superstitions, let him. George tells himself he doesn’t care. He’s still curious, though, and for him, that feeling always triumphs.

“Before I risk all of my experience points trying to fight some fire demon, will you tell me what this is all about?”  
Dream swallows his last bite of bread. “Getting blaze rods.”  
George isn’t even surprised by the smart aleck response at this point. “You know what I mean. All of this. What is your big noble quest? Why does the King want to stop you from finishing it?”  
Dream runs a hand through his hair, curly from the heat, and George sees his freckles again, just a smattering of them on the top of his forehead.

“Have you ever heard of the End?”

“Of course,” George replies, “that was my favourite story as a kid. I loved hearing about the dragon that spits purple fire-- I’ve never seen purple, but I always imagined what it would look like in my head.”  
Dream’s lips curl upwards at the anecdote. He continues, “well, it’s all real.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s true, all of it. The End exists, and the dragon does too.”

“No, you’re lying, Dream. A magical island with a fuckton of endermen and a dragon, floating in some mystical void somewhere? Absolute bullshit.”  
Dream’s tone grows quiet and serious. “It’s true, I know it is. I found an ancient text, once, from an abandoned village I was at with the King. When my friend was able to decode it, it talked about the End, and how to get to it. How killing the dragon would bring an eternity of peace and prosperity to the whole world.  
I thought it must have been fate, finding that battered old scroll, but,” Dream lips purse into a thin line, “the King didn’t agree. He thinks that if the ender dragon is killed, there’ll be nothing holding the world back from complete anarchy. He thinks that people won’t need a King anymore, and he’ll lose all his power. We fought about it for hours at a time… it was awful. He used to be my friend, but I saw him go mad. All that was left in him was greed, and paranoia. He even burned the scroll, so there’s only four people in the whole world who know what it said.”  
George doesn’t even realize he’s slack-jawed until Dream pauses. Normally he’d accuse him of making it all up, but Dream’s tone, his unusual seriousness… George believes him. 

“Okay.”

Dream turns slowly to face George, his expression inscrutable under the mask. “What? I tell you everything about my plan, all the information that you could just run off to your precious King with, and your only response is ‘okay’? Come on now.”

George blinks. The dry heat of the lava is starting to make his eyes water. “I mean, what do you want me to say? Push me in the lava if you’re so mad about it.”  
“We both know I’m not going to do that.”  
“And why is that, Dream?” George smirks. Dream chews on his bottom lip, looking like he’s actually contemplating it.  
“Too many near misses already today. After you’ve gotten eight-ish blaze rods for me, I’ll-- I’ll stab you, or something. Maybe a Wither skeleton will do that for me.”

George’s eyes bulge out of his skull. “Wait, you don’t mean Wither skeletons are real too?”

There’s a few tense moments where the dots connect in both their heads. Then Dream burst out laughing, wheezing so hard that George is concerned he’ll choke. The potions at his waist clack together alarmingly.  
“You read--” he chokes, coughs, and gulps in a breath, “you read ALL of those stupid books in the library, and you didn’t realize Wither skeletons are a-- are a real thing?”  
George curls his knees to his chest, embarrassed, as Dream hyperventilates. If anything, he’s glad the man has shaken off his hangover, and the stress of almost dying.

Only because I need him to be in his right mind when I bring him back to the King, he tells himself lamely. The thing is, George is less and less sure of himself every time he remembers his mission. What can he say? It’s almost nice having someone to talk to, and not having to sprint, track, and fight every single second of the day.  
Do it for Sapnap and Bad, he wheedles with his inner thoughts, if nothing else. You’ll be able to get back to the castle, you’ll never see Dream… Nightmare… again, and you’ll live a nice, quiet life hunting normal people, people who’ve stolen cattle and committed tax fraud.

Dream wipes tears from his eyes and sighs, shaking George from his thoughts. His mouth is curled up in a genuine smile, and his posture seems relaxed. He doesn’t seem to care about the brooding look on George’s face, or the fact that they’re sitting so close against the nether brick pillar that their shoulders are almost touching. If they weren’t in a fiery hellscape, it might almost be pleasant.  
“So…” George starts, not knowing what else to say.  
“So,” repeats Dream.

“Let’s get this bread, Lost Boy.”


	7. Concede

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heyyyy everyone! happy holidays and happy new year!  
> i did in fact disappear off the face of the earth for a while, i was exhausted from nanowrimo and i just couldn't bring myself to get this chapter written. this was the hardest chapter yet, because there was so much i needed to cover in so little story-time lol  
> guess what's coming next chapter? even more talking, even more lore dumps, and even more angst! enjoy!  
> p.s can't believe dream hit 15 mil today, it seems like just yesterday i watched him hit three mil. anybody else been here since three mil? aaahhh the good old days /j  
> \- author (she/her)

Dream has never really thought about heights. Then again, he’s never had to.  
Back at the castle, he stuck to the deeper and darker parts of the fortress, the underground vaults and warm, dim lighting of the redstone workshops being his most frequent haunts. His hunter training was useful, but not as all-encompassing as GeorgeNotFound’s surely was. He’d squinted at the complex rope-bridge course that the King’s builders had slung all around the top turrets of the castle, said, “Fuck that,” and slunk back to the blacksmith’s. The King had teased him mercilessly for it, and even when the first week of ridicule died down, he never passed up an opportunity to mention it afterwards. Dream can almost hear his laugh, and it sends a shock wave of regret through him. Regret, and of course, just plain old fear.

His knuckles are white, sweaty fingertips digging into the nether brick pillar so hard they hurt. Dream takes a few more calming breaths, and opens his eyes again. He keeps them firmly planted on the burgundy bricks in front of him, and definitely not below him, where he can hear George’s short pants as he hoists himself up after Dream. There’s no wind in the Nether, only the soft churning of the lava and the unidentified rumbles and groans that occasionally bounce off of the gargantuan cavern walls. The odd silence forms the perfect backdrop for Dream’s shaky breaths.

“Hurry up,” grumbles George from below him. Dream doesn’t respond, not trusting his voice at the moment. He does, however, try to pick up the pace, noticing that there’s only a few more feet to scale. At long last, he hoists himself up and over the edge. He gets to his feet, wipes his sweaty palms on his trousers, and pulls his mask firmly over his face from where it had been slipping down. The joints in his back pop as his spine straightens. 

After a moment of consideration, Dream extends his hands and helps George haul himself onto the bridge. He keeps his eyes firmly pointed away from the jagged cut in the red brick where the entrance to the fortress hangs, incomplete, over the lava. Instead, he turns a tactical eye to the maze of walkways and distant signs of movement from window-like holes in the foreboding cubical buildings. 

George snorts. “Really into interior design, weren’t they?”  
Dream just sighs.  
“Why aren’t you laughing? That was an excellent joke,” George whines petulantly.  
Dream bites the inside of his cheek to keep himself from snickering. “Oh come on.”  
“oH cOmE oN,” the shorter man mocks in a poor imitation of Dream’s accent, and Dream finally gives in, giggling and shaking his head. 

\--

The two of them set off into the heart of the fortress, swords drawn, but spirits light. George observes Dream as he follows him-- he doesn’t seem at all tense, and when his head swivels to follow a distant noise, it’s more casual than scared. He even nods politely at the zombie pigmen they pass, earning him what George hopes are approving pig grunts. He’s in his element. It’s like the snarky stranger with the bags under his eyes that George was chasing down just days ago never existed, like he’s chipped away at the metaphorical mask of Nightmare, and the real person is starting to appear. 

Why am I wasting time thinking about it, George scolds himself. His guilty conscience at his own introspective thoughts sends his brain spiraling down a new path.

I have my sword.  
I have my sword.   
We’re on a bridge.  
Just attack him now.  
His back is turned.  
He’ll be taken by surprise.  
He’ll surrender.  
I can get out of this hellhole.  
I can get back to Sapnap and Bad.  
I can complete my mission.

All of these thoughts, along with loose plans on how to accomplish them, drift across George’s mind, but he forces them back, blocking the cracks in his hastily constructed mental wall with his hands. He feels his palms slipping, the pain of being both a trained hunter of three years and a young, admittedly non-confrontational village kid forming an unpleasant cesspool in his stomach.

How could just a few days of sarcastic back-and-forth do this? How did things go from black and white to shades of red and green that George can’t even see?

After what Dream’s told him about the King, about his dark motivations, can he even go back to his old life?

And it’s at that moment, of course, that Dream stops in his tracks, George bumping into him and then hastily stammering an apology. They’ve found what Dream’s been looking for-- a set of uneven stairs leads up from the pathway to a balcony-like tower, in the center of which sits a woven metal cage with fire crackling within. As George watches it, transfixed, great clouds of smoke begin to billow from the strange object. The hairs on the back of George’s neck prickle.

“Alright.” Any joking note has faded from Dream’s voice. He sounds commanding, authoritative, bursting with the sheer, almost reckless confidence that George recognizes from their snippets of conversation exchanged as predator and prey. 

“I’ve done this before, but not with so many of them. You don’t have a shield, so you’ll need to stay close to the blaze. Their aim gets thrown off if you get in their space, so stay low. Aim for the space between their head and the rods-- it looks like empty space but it’s not. Enchantments or some shit. I’ll take the left, you take the right.”

George’s head swims with the overload of information. He wraps both of his hands around the hilt of his sword and advances up the steps next to Dream, towards the clouds of smoke where inhuman grumbling and the clanking of gold can be heard, growing louder and louder by the second. “Like the creepers in the cave?” He asks.  
“Yup,” Dream responds. “On the count of three…”

The first blaze bursts forth from a wall of gray, a hideous creature of flame and flecks of molten metal flicking away from its whirring, warped rods. The red eyes in the center of its massive levitating head narrow at George, and it trills ominously.

“On second thought,” says Dream conversationally, “now.”

The two of them run forwards, lunging onto the top of the platform and vaulting over the spawner at the blazes popping one by one into existence. George gives a cautious swipe of his sword, knees bent as Dream had suggested. The blade passes right through the air below the blaze’s head, and it feels like it’s dragging through water. There’s a metallic sound, and the beast crumbles into ash, a shiny golden rod clattering to the ground in its wake. George gives a surprised huff, then turns his attention to the next blaze advancing on him.

He runs full-force at the beast, and he can see it gearing up to launch fireballs at him. At the last possible second, he falls to his knees and stabs blindly upwards, passing right under the blaze and chopping it straight in half. A drop of molten gold lands on his bare forearm, sleeves of his tunic rolled up in the heat, and George hisses. He swipes it away, heart pumping from the pain and the adrenaline. He turns around to see how Dream’s doing.

His first thought is, he’s a madman. Dream has good sword technique (George recognizes some of the moves from his training with Bad, and briefly wonders who Dream trained with at the castle), but he seems to have abandoned the finer details of swordplay in favor of hacking and slashing. It’s moments like these that George is reminded of the unfortunate fact that Dream is far bigger and stronger than him-- he’s demolished at least four blazes in the time it took George to kill two. There are six blaze rods laying at varying angles on the ground. George ignores the newest puff of smoke growing out of the spawner, and rushes around, picking up the blaze rods and chucking them haphazardly into his bag.

“Dream,” he calls out, “how many do we need?”  
“Eight,” the man pants, “but seven is fine if we have to get out of here.”  
“Alright!” George feels heat seep through the back of his tunic, and without a second of hesitation, whirls around with his sword at arm’s length. The blaze that’s trying to creep up on him barely has time to widen its eyes before the iron point severs a rod from its body.

“We have enough,” George yells, “we have enough, Dream, let’s go!”  
“Go, go, I’ll hold them off!” Four brand-new blazes spawn in midair, rising several feet into the air and already setting their fireballs alight. George only hesitates for a second before nodding and sailing in one leap down the flight of stairs. He spins behind the corner of the first nether brick archway and throws his sword on the ground with a clang, wiping the sweat from his forehead.   
Ten seconds later, George hears the sounds of heavy footsteps charging out of the spawner corridor. He swipes his sword back up and prays that Dream has food ready to go-- he’s on five hearts, and his hunger is getting dangerously low. Thankfully, Dream seems to have read his mind-- when he comes careening around the corner, cape aflame and a mad grin on his face, he’s juggling not only his scratched and ashy sword, but two loaves of bread. George automatically raises his hands, and Dream tosses him one. It’s smoking slightly, but as the two of them set their unspoken path back through the fortress, it’s the best thing George has ever tasted.

“So, did we get the bread, Dream?”  
The walk has been silent so far. Dream killed another enderman, but it didn’t drop a pearl, and George can tell that simple fact is annoying him. They’ve scurried back across George’s bridge, woven back through the red ravine, and are currently hacking their way through the wall of netherrack leading around the sea of magma back to their portal’s outcrop. Without even having to discuss it, they both gave the blue forest a wide, wide berth.

Dream laughs. “I carried you, but yeah.”  
“Bitch.”  
“I see why he sent you, after all the failed attempts. The one hunter with the power to annoy me to death.”  
“Doesn’t change you being a bitch.”  
They keep walking.  
“What are your friends like? Your… trainers and stuff.”  
George blinks, unsure whether or not to laugh. “Are you serious?”  
Dream scoffs, absent-mindedly combing his hair farther back into his hood with his fingers. His pace slows slightly. “Yeah! I want… I want to hear about them. They sound nice.”  
George pushes the automatic wave of suspicion that floods him down. It’s a habit at this point, one almost more powerful than the feeling itself. He thinks of Sapnap and Bad, and wonders how the blaze he can talk about them without revealing who they are. Haven’t I already done that? he thinks. 

Dream kicks at a stray chunk of netherrack, his body language telling George that he thinks he’s been refused. George hurries to say something, anything.  
“I have two friends. Ba-- the first one, he trained me to be a hunter, he’s pretty high up in the, er, the ranks. And the other guy is just a blacksmith. He’s good enough to hunt, but he doesn’t like, er, following rules, I guess. The King,” George hesitates before revealing too much, “isn’t… very… fond of him. At least, not as much as my trainer. He likes rules, the weirdo. Dunno how he and Sa-- my other friend get along sometimes.” He clears his throat self-consciously, unable to see Dream’s reactions because of his mask, only the blank drawn-on eyes. A thought pops into his head. “You’re a lot like him, actually. I feel like you’d be friends.”

Dream gives a forced smile, and George knows that he’s either said too much or too little. There’s something hiding in the thin curve of the man’s lips, but he can’t distinguish it.  
“Yeah… he sounds like a guy I knew way back, too. Maybe they know each other now… now that I’m gone.”  
George realizes something, and before he can think about it, he blurts it out. “They must think I’m gone too, by now.”

And just like that, ice trickles into the warm, amicable atmosphere surrounding the two. The golden light of the Nether highlights the slow, tense movement of Dream’s jaw as he stares down at George, both their paces slowing until they grind to a halt. George’s hand strays unconsciously to his belt, fingers drifting over the handle of his sword. The chorus of little voices in his head is back, except this time, they’re stronger, and they sound awfully familiar.

You can do this, George.   
Quickly now.  
Before we stop waiting for you.  
The edge is right over there.  
Back him into the corner.  
You know the moves it would take.  
I trained you for this, George.  
Put your sword to his throat.  
He has rope in his bag.   
The portal’s not far away.  
You’ll be back before you know it.  
Back to us.  
We miss you, George.

George hates this. He hates the hot and cold, the push and pull, the months of running all pushed away in just one week. He hates not knowing what’s under the mask, whether he’s a hostage or a helper, who’s in control.

“I just want this to end,” he thinks, then realizes his mouth has betrayed him. Dream tenses up, frozen like a cat about to pounce-- or run for his life. George knows it too well.  
They hold still for a moment, a few feet apart on the rough mottled stone, steps away from plummeting into the tangerine glow a hundred feet below them. George can see faint purple to his right-- their portal’s still working. But right now, he couldn’t care less about the heat, the dark, or anything, besides the man in front of him. The hollow silence of the cavern drills into his mind and eats away at his rationality. He doesn’t dare breathe.

“Do it.” Dream’s words are clipped and taunting. It’s a challenge. “Try and fight me. See how you do.”

George raises an eyebrow. His confident persona washes over him, and he takes out his sword. But his mind is screaming at him, and his own mixed signals make him hesitate. For the first time in three months, he truly, genuinely, doesn’t know what to do. Nothing Bad ever told him, no hours of sparring with Sapnap, could have ever prepared him for a situation like this. Where his morals are coming in the way of everything he’s ever been taught.

“Do it,” Dream repeats, and takes a step forward. “I know you’ve been thinking about it this whole time. Every day, every single fucking time I’ve talked to you, trying to get you to get off my fucking back, you’ve just been thinking about different ways to catch me.” His words are venom, and he spits them into existence in a sour way that makes George afraid of him. In the distance, a group of pigmen leer at the pair almost tauntingly. 

“I… no I haven’t.” It’s all George can say in the moment. Any quip he’s ever thought up dies on his tongue.

Dream huffs, tilting his head. “And you’re the worst liar I’ve ever seen. But it’s okay, Lost Boy,” the name stings when Dream says it, “you’re just doing your job. You’re just doing what he tells you to. I get it. That was me, too, a year ago.”  
Dream seems to deflate. He tosses his hands in the air, boots scuffing the ground, potions sloshing at his waist. He’s every picture the fearsome Nightmare whose traitorous escapades George was told of at the castle. But he’s not fighting, and he’s not running, either.

\--

“Your call. I don’t want to fight you, and I don’t think you do either, so stop lying to yourself. I’ve told you exactly where I’m going, what I’m planning, all of it. Do what you want now.” 

Dream’s exhausted, to say the least. He hadn’t been intending to let his thoughts flow freely from his mouth like he’s currently doing, but seeing George with his sword drawn, like the past week never existed and they’re in the savannah all over again, has broken him just a little bit (though he would never admit it out loud). 

Running, fighting, worrying about not one but two peoples’ hunger and health, treading on eggshells around a jumpy hunter who’s still convinced Dream has some sort of ulterior motive, then blacking out in a strange forest only to nearly burn to death the next day… Dream curses the King. He curses his greed, his foolishness, and the nights they spent screaming at each other over the stupid scroll. He curses not being able to get out of the castle sooner, not taking his friends with him. If he’d stayed just a couple more days… maybe he would have convinced them to join him. Maybe he wouldn’t have been so alone for so long.

Maybe he would have met GeorgeNotFound in better circumstances.  
None of this Dream says, of course. It all hits him, a tidal wave of memory and emotion and stupid regrets, that he’s been pressing down with cold hard survival for months. What he does do is slowly, gingerly, sink to his knees, so George towers over him, rather than the other way around. He guides the blade of George’s sword, where it hangs at his side, to his throat. The tip presses into his skin, and he inhales shallowly.  
“There,” he says. “You got me. Just get it over with, you stubborn asshole.”

It’s the longest silence of Dream’s whole life, or at least, it seems like it. Even the beady eyes of the Pigmen huddled around the cavern walls are locked onto him: the great Nightmare, enemy of the state, surrendering to a five-foot-eight Manhunter’s apprentice. If only his friends could see him now.

George chews on his bottom lip. He’s so easy to read usually, gripes Dream to himself, what the blaze is he thinking now? Dream can’t tell. He closes his eyes, not wanting to see the man’s smug face when he knows he’s won.  
But it never comes-- no slash of the sword, no restraints around his wrists, no blindfold. George doesn’t even say anything. 

It’s been almost a minute. Heat flushes up Dream’s neck and ears. He’s glad for his all-concealing cloak. How stupid must he look, just kneeling here with his hastily made golden boots and hair curling from the humidity?  
“This is weird,” mumbles George finally. “Like, this is wrong.”  
Dream cracks an eye open. George is fiddling with the leather wrappings on his sword hilt. He’s taken it away from Dream’s neck, but refuses to look at him.  
“I don’t… really… want to. Like, I want to… not fight you, obviously, you’d crush me, but this is just… not how it’s supposed to be.” George is choosing his words so carefully. Dream can’t tell whether or not he’s being honest.

“So you aren’t going to turn me in?” Dream coaxes, hoping for a solid answer for once.  
George nods, more firmly this time. His dark eyebrows are furrowed, but not at Dream. The wheels are turning in his head at an alarming rate-- Dream half-expects steam to come out of his ears.  
“Please stand up,” sighs George, “it’s so awkward talking to you when you’re the size of, like, a baby Piglin.”

Dream snorts, humour finally trickling back into the numbness of his body. “Your sword is actually, like, half your height, and you’re standing up.”  
“Shut up!”  
“Oh, now you want to stuff cloth in my mouth. Typical.”  
But Dream does as he’s told, and rises. George shifts nervously on the balls of his feet.

“George.”  
“Yes.”  
“Whatever you have to say, spit it out already.”  
“You’ll just hate me. I’m not even convinced you stopped hating me.”  
“You’re the one who’s been hunting me for ages. I hate the King. Not you.”  
“Fine, then. Let’s keep walking, though-- I hate that those pigmen are looking at us.” George sets off at a brisk pace towards the portal, but in two long strides Dream falls into step beside him.

“So, tell me.” Dream won’t give up on interrogation, not this time.  
With that one final push, George finally throws his inhibitions away. “I didn’t want to accept the job, at first. I hate fighting, or at least, I hate it when it’s not just for fun. My friend-- my trainer-- he taught me stuff about tracking and bridging and plants and stuff, and that was fun, but unless it was with Sa-- my other friend, I didn’t like learning how to fight. 

The King told me it would be just this one big job, like a, a graduation or something, and then I wouldn’t be an apprentice anymore, and I could track down, like, normal people, thieves and tax evaders and stuff, not the kingdom’s most wanted and mysterious enemy. And he-- my trainer-- he looked so happy when the King said that, so… proud, that I couldn’t say no.” Dream watches George’s Adam’s apple bob. “I couldn’t say no. I couldn’t just throw three years of my life away.”  
George shoots a nervous glance at the pigmen by the left cavern wall, who are still watching them with amused interest. “There. I hate talking. Your turn.”

Dream doesn’t know what to say. What words could he possibly offer that would comfort George?  
What I can do, he thinks, is tell him what I know.  
“The hunters should never have existed in the first place.”

George looks confused, and starts to open his mouth, but Dream hurriedly explains himself.   
“He didn’t talk to anyone about it when he made the positions. There’s no traditions, no laws, nothing that says the King can have his own private assassin army. I’m actually pretty sure it breaks some of the laws in the old books. But he hid those away, so not even a loser like you could read them and call him out on his bullshit.”  
George doesn’t try to refute the insult. He just listens.

“Nobody can stop him, no one person, not even the entire village, I think, could make him see that he’s wrong. He should never have been asking people to do his dirty work, or kill people for him, but his head’s full of too many numbers and not enough feelings. He’s always been like that, but when we learned about the End…” Memories of late-night shouting matches, of dirty looks cast his way by the other redstone engineers, and the helpless silence of his friends as they watched him tear Dream’s reputation apart, piece by piece, flash by Dream’s vision. He blinks, and just like that, they’re gone.

“That’s why I need to kill the Dragon. Something more powerful than a person needs to put him in his place. Something older than laws and Kings.”  
They’ve reached the portal, still gently pulsing with violet light. Dream steps in and braces for the familiar seasickness, letting George predictably face-plant into his chest again despite his efforts to stay upright. He makes sure to keep his arms by his sides, and let George shove himself back up. He doesn’t want George to think he’s attacking him or anything, not when the older man is clearly going through the same mental gymnastics Dream was before he left the castle.

The world spins, flares brightly, then collapses inwards into darkness. Dream feels his insides being dragged back to the overworld. He’s returning with a full bag of blaze rods and ender pearls, and a lot more understanding of his would-be hunter.   
Sound carries differently in the spaces between worlds, but Dream knows George hears him when he says,  
“When I’m done, we won’t have to think about winning anymore. There won’t be laws, or hunters, or castles, or anything. Just living.”


End file.
